


Persephone

by CollectorOfWonder



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-04-11 07:58:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 125,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4427561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CollectorOfWonder/pseuds/CollectorOfWonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Red and Liz are in the wind while the task force works doggedly under Ressler's command to hunt them down. Liz faces multiple uncomfortable truths about her past, realizing there's far more history between herself and Reddington than she'd ever imagined. As Ressler's preconceptions about the world and his role in it begin to crumble, the task force once again finds themselves allied with Reddington in order to catch one of the most dangerous arms of the alliance: the covert operative known only as Persephone. AU from S2E22.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Daddy

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very action-heavy, fast-paced sort of story, and features all of the canon characters (because I like everyone on this show and want to write them!) There's a light dusting of unresolved Keenler, mostly from Ressler's perspective, but I think that's just who Ressler is, really. He cares about people more than he's ever comfortable admitting. 
> 
> I realize most of the Lizzington community will twitch at seeing Tom Keen's name in the tags, but bear with me. When handled correctly, I think he makes a hell of a complicated antagonist. Allow me to assure you that there's plenty of slow-burn intimacy here between Red and Lizzy in exchange. And probably just some good old-fashioned "burning", too. ;)
> 
> In the perfect casting of my mind, Hannah Ferris is played by Katee Sackhoff.

**Prologue**

“Do you know what this is, Charlotte?” The voice is soft, deep. Comforting and familiar, but now laced with discomfort and worry.

“Yep,” she replies glibly. “Bang!” Makes a gun with her finger and thumb and winks at him. Her giggles die when she sees that he’s not laughing. “I’m not allowed to touch it.”

“Some day,” he says, “you might have to, so this needs to be our secret. But if you have to use it, you tell your mother where it is. She doesn’t want to know now, but she might need to. You both might need to, if anything ever happens to me. Just like I showed you before." He points to the safety, lets her hold the weight of it in her hand, with his hands over hers for guidance.

This is Important; she can tell by his tone. It’s deep, gravelled, like something is catching his words in his throat. “Promise me that you’ll remember where it is.” She nods. She has an excellent memory, especially if she can match an image with a sound. That’s why she’s so good at the piano. The click of the box, the sliding of the metal corners on the wood floor under the dresser in the guest bedroom. There’s more in the box than just a gun, she notices. There’s money, and papers. One of the papers has her picture on it.

“Is this a pretend box?” she asks, curious. There’s never been a gun in a pretend box before. The boxes, sometimes he shows her little books with her picture, but a different name. There are stories he makes up to go with the names, and she practices memorizing them. Mom doesn’t like it when they play that game, but she likes to pretend she’s a spy.

Just like Daddy.

“Kind of, sweetheart. Only, this is more serious.” He slides it away under the floorboard, but she stops him and asks him to wait.

He looks confused, but patient as she reappears in the guest room with her special keychain; the one she keeps on her big girl purse from Mommy. It’s a little metal pair of ballet slippers. It was just a little thing he’d given in and bought her ( _one puppy-dog look from her and you cave like a house of cards, Ray_ ) when they went to the mall ( _what on earth do you need it for, sweetheart? what key are you going to put on that chain?_ ), but she carried it everywhere. It was her talisman. She’d read that word in a book and liked how it sounded. Talisman. Magic. Like that game Bobby and Greg down the street played and then got into trouble with their mom for playing because it had demons and magic and stuff.

She put it into the box. “If it’s serious,” she says, “I don’t want to forget it.” He coughs and looks away from her as he puts the box away. “Are you crying, Daddy?”

He doesn’t say anything, just hugs her and says they’ll go watch Fraggle Rock now. She skips down the hallway, singing “Dance your cares away…”

Worry’s for another day.


	2. Elizabeth Keen

The roadblocks were up within the hour. Flights weren’t grounded, but a major airport was never an option and Ressler knew that. So instead, they scrambled a handful of “training” flights out of Bolling, flying in tandem over the entire DC Metro area, effectively grounding any craft departing from a private runway.

Someone, he noted wryly, had been paying attention in class.

He hummed under his breath as he considered their viable options. Disappearing solo would be the best option, though he worried about her state of mind. His own, too, if he had to be brutally honest with himself.

The entire lynchpin around which he’d formed his new life had been uprooted. If he can just keep this one thing safe, this one life free and incorruptible, if he can manage it all on his own terms and just keep this one last shred of his humanity…

Then it would all be all right? How damned naive could one man be for so long?

_Find the one thing, Ray. The one thing that keeps you sane and you hold on to that through Hell and beyond. If you can hold on, it doesn’t matter what they do to you, because they can’t ever touch that one thing._

They had wrenched away his humanity in one night of bloodshed, but he’d found it again in a pair of terrified eyes watering in a smoke-filled closet. It was Katya’s humanity, not his, but he would borrow it, nurture it, hold on to that one last shred of his old life and pray that the sunlight he could fill her days with would keep the shadows of his at bay.

But he failed. Again.

The familiar gnawing beast of despair and panic nipped at the edges of his thoughts, but he thrust it back with experience. Not today. He’d indulge it some dark day, over a bottle of scotch behind a locked door, but not today, not now. Not when her head rested trustingly against his shoulder once more, finding respite from reality in the blackness of sleep.

_To sleep, perchance to dream._

“Ay,” he murmured aloud, “there’s the rub.”

A shift and a sigh indicated that she was not so asleep as he’d thought. “What now?” she whispered, yawning and lifting her head. He felt her fingers check swiftly and lightly to ensure she hadn’t drooled on his jacket in her sleep. It was enough to make the corner of his mouth twitch upward. Bless the woman; every single thing she did was enchanting.

He could well understand how she could get under the skin of a man to the point of madness, though sympathy with Tom Keen was not an emotion he felt like currently contemplating.

The tell-tale sound of a helicopter roared past, search lights drifting over the windows. He slid swiftly from the couch to the floor, reaching out to pull her with him, but she was already rolling, pressing herself against the floorboards and out of sight. He kept his hand on hers, and she met his eyes stoically, tensed and waiting for the worst.

The sound and lights faded just as he marveled at the core of steel in Elizabeth Keen. She was strong, he thought. Stronger than she knew, because she’d never been tested, not really. Not like this. In this moment, he didn’t see Sam Milhoan looking back at him through her eyes; he saw Katya.

It was just a sweep; their location was still safe for the moment. He attempted to stand first, but she beat him to it and reached out to help him up. He grimaced as the effort pulled at the stitches in his chest. “Old Donald’s learned some new tricks. Never again,” he quipped, to cover the pain, “will I underestimate the men in your life, Lizzy.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, worried gaze showing him that she wasn’t fooled, “me, either. Are you okay, Red?”

For a moment, he debated laughing it off for her benefit, but knew she’d see through it immediately. A profiler, he thought with exasperation for the umpteenth time, of all professions, and damn if she wasn’t good at it. It was unnerving. He got by most people like her because of the assumptions they unconsciously held about criminals - assumptions that rarely applied to him, and when they did, it was only to his surface persona. Rarely did someone peg him as the chameleon he truly was, but Elizabeth had an uncanny gaze that saw right through his skin sometimes.

Thankfully, not all the time. The FBI’s square-peg training had done him a favor in that regard. “No,” he admitted, “but I’ll mend.” He saw the guilt flicker over her features, but shook his head. “None of that now. We don’t have time to indulge in recriminations or wallow in guilt. We have to go. Normally, I like to sit tight because panicked movements are what stupid people make, but I’m afraid we don’t have a choice. Agent Ressler, we could outlast, but it’s the Cabal that we can’t give the benefit of time. I’ve dealt them a setback, but you’ve provided them a distraction. There’s a chance we can spin that to our benefit, but not from here. We’re too close.”

She paused, pulling in a long breath, and then expelled it in a rush with a simple nod. “What do you have in mind?”

“If you give me five more minutes and then ask again, I’m sure I’ll have a sufficiently brilliant answer to support my reputation.”

“Shakespeare,” she said in a seeming non-sequitur. He blinked. “Hamlet. I had to memorize that soliloquy and I hated it.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t place the words you said earlier, but I knew it was familiar.”

He had forgotten his musings prior to the helicopter. “It’s always better to face your troubles. Hamlet was a wimp. Death isn’t the way to take arms against a sea of troubles.”

That elicited a smile. “The devil you know over what dreams may come?”

“Indeed,” he agreed, knowing full well he was the devil in question. He’d take it.

He reached out to her and she placed her hand in his automatically, without flinching, and he looked at her again; really looked. The clear gaze, the worried but open expression. Was it that easy to regain her trust? He had given her nothing tangible in return but peril.

Except now, he realized, she had proof that he did care about her and that it wasn’t all about the fulcrum. He had tried to give her the gift of a normal life for her own sake, and she could see that in his actions, now. He wasn’t sure if that was comforting or terrifying. What he was sure of was that she now looked to him to get her out of this alive.

...alive. Hold on.

“Lizzy,” he asked slowly, gripping her fingers in his, “how good is your right hook, and what precise horrible thing would I need to say to find out? Aim for the nose. I’d like to keep my teeth.”

************

“The motel room is empty and wiped down. Reeks of bleach. I don’t need to dust to know we won’t find any prints,” Samar’s voice rang out from the small speakers in Ressler’s smartphone.

“No cards have been run,” Aram contributed. “Not a penny of her accounts have been moved recently. I did find one interesting thing, though.”

Ressler looked up from his perusal of Liz’s file. He had been trying to focus, but found himself constantly distracted by remembered snippets of conversation. Liz’s laugh, the pile of snow peas he’d heaped on the discarded lid of her wonton soup because he hated them, her daring him to try and catch a grain of rice with the chopsticks after they’d finished that bottle of horrible purple vinegar she called wine. The comforting way she’d gripped his shoulder and listened to him without interruption in Alaska.

_Damn it, Liz._

He’d let her in, he’d trusted her, he’d started to care about her. He’d talked to her about Audrey, about the pills, about...about the damn baby. He had trusted her.

_Don’t make me do this._

“What did you find, Aram?” he asked, keeping his voice level and his face blank. A poker face he could do, and do well.

“Well,” Aram said, shifting his weight in that way he did when he had something to tell that he didn’t like telling, “a few weeks ago, Agent Keen...er, I guess its just Elizabeth, now? Ms. Keen?”

“Aram.” Samar’s voice drew him back.

“Right, sorry. Anyway, a few weeks ago, she liquidated some assets, including a condo in one of those new high-rises down by Navy Yard.”

“If she had a condo,” Samar broke in, “why was she living in this horrible motel? This place smells like despair and divorced men.”

Aram shrugged. “According to the building’s concierge service, she never moved in. It was purchased roughly two to three weeks prior to its sale, but it wasn’t purchased by Liz.”

“Who was it purchased by?” Ressler asked, already feeling a sense of foreboding that he’d know the answer.

“It’s complicated, but the end result is that it was likely purchased by Mr. Reddington.” Aram shrugged again. “I’ve seen enough of how he moves money to read between the lines at this point. He likes it done cleanly and simply and wherever possible, completely legitimate.”

Ressler tossed Aram an approving look. “Nicely done. Can you trace any of this money she got from the sale?” he added.

“Already did, and that’s the interesting thing. Liz didn’t use it; she set up an anonymous scholarship fund for the daughter of Eugene Ames. The harbormaster,” he added, unnecessarily, as though any of them could forget how close Liz’s misjudgement had brought them to the brink.

Something in Ressler relaxed - some tight ball of pain that he had misread Elizabeth Keen so completely started to ease. He was still pissed. Hell, he was beyond pissed; he was utterly furious with her, but whatever else was going on, whatever story there was behind why in hell she shot and killed Tom Connolly, he was not totally mistaken in the character of his former partner.

He had been, however, mistaken in Raymond Reddington for far too long. It was well past time for a re-evaluation. He had to look at the man as Liz saw him. He hated profiling, vastly preferring hard data, but where Raymond Reddington was concerned, the data could lie as easily as the man himself.

“So the money’s a dead end,” Samar said over the phone, her voice sounding even more tinny and distant.

“She’s with him, right?” Aram interjected. “I mean, that at least we know - she has to be with Reddington.”

Before he agreed, Samar asked “Who else would she turn to?”

Ressler froze, the file still in his hand. He looked down to a smiling picture of Elizabeth Keen with her arm around a tall, thin man with tortoise-shell glasses. The man Ressler and Reddington had found knee-deep in neo-nazis, the man who had waltzed in as calm as day and announced to a federal judge that he had killed Eugene Ames. The very same man who had looked at a shocked, pale Liz as though she were the only person in that courtroom.

A plastic-covered sofa and a photo album with Vanessa Cruz’s face floated back to him. _Some women keep making the same mistakes with men. Rinse and repeat._

“Keen,” he spat out. “Tom Keen.”

Aram raised his eyebrows. “The ex-husband slash spy who she shot and then kept chained up on a boat for four months.”

“The one Samar thinks is romantic,” Ressler pointed out, not missing the scowl that briefly crossed Aram’s face.

“Liz might still be in love with him. It’s hard to let go of something like what she thought they had,” Samar pointed out, ignoring Ressler. “She’s been furious with Reddington, and if she won’t turn to him, she’d turn to Keen.”

Ressler waved a hand, uselessly, as Samar couldn’t see him. “We can’t discount Reddington. None of us have any idea why he picked Liz in the first place; what their connection truly is. But I want to know about Keen. Samar, see what you can find out. Aram?”

“Yes?”

“You’re with me.” He set the file down and stood up, grabbing his jacket.

“I am?”

“Yes,” Ressler said shortly. “We’re going to talk to Cooper again. Something’s bugging me.”

*************

“Where are you headed?”

“PG County,” the tech spat impatiently. “Look, we need to go.”

The cop paused. “Why aren’t you taking them to GW?”

“Christ, have you seen the roadblocks? I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve got one DOA and another that’s gonna be there soon if you don’t let me through.”

Officer Akron was not having a good morning, and this ambulance driver was not helping his migraine, but he still had to check the back. “Hold on, don’t move. Unlatch the back doors for me?”

The driver impatiently hit he release and the officer ambled up to the open back, only to rock back on his heels. One gurney had a blood-spattered body on it, with hoses and various things hanging off, haphazardly discarded while the other EMT was bent over the second, adjusting the IV in the bloody forearm. His face was covered in blood, eyes wild beneath a torn and bloody business suit. The other EMT glanced up briefly; long enough for him to see that she was an attractive, if weary, blonde. He remembered the report that came in over the scanner - some accident over in Bladensburg. The EMT gestured impatiently at him as the man on the gurney started to spit blood. “Can you get us through this mess?” she clipped.

“Yeah, yeah, hold on.” Officer Akron stepped back and waved over to his partner on the other side of the road. “I can’t escort you, but you can hit your lights,” he yelled up as he closed the doors. “God speed.”

It was at least half the day before he though to follow up on the poor souls in the ambulance. Car accident, he remembered over dinner, as he slurped up his wife’s spaghetti. Terrible thing, he told Susan. The man on the gurney looked like he’d lost a prize fight.

He stopped talking with the fork halfway to his mouth. He’d been so focused on the man’s injuries that he hadn’t registered his features. There was no way, though, right? And there was that other body on the gurney, and the EMT was blonde. Nah. There was no way he’d screwed up that badly. He’d just call the hospital real quick and confirm their arrival, check up on the victims.

“I heard about that,” Susan said. “Took them hours to clean up that mess. I can’t believe anyone survived it. Bill’s wife - remember those troopers from Police Week we went out with? - anyway, Bill’s wife said it looked like two crash-test drivers had it out on the Parkway. Right before morning rush hour, too. What a mess.”

She found him two hours later, still holding the phone and clutching a paper handout of two FBI Most Wanted fugitives. He looked ill.

****************

“We’ve got a lead,” Aram’s voice said in his ear. “Dembe was spotted at a warehouse up on Brentwood.”

“Address,” Ressler demanded, and steered his vehicle around to take a short cut, his GPS chiming at him in annoyance. He glanced over automatically, part of him ready to tell Liz to turn it off.

But she wasn’t there, of course. There was no second cup of coffee on his dash, no smell of sausage biscuit and Pantene shampoo, no wry smile.

He really needed to get a handle on his anger. Some part of him, he realized, hoped that Liz was with Keen, that Samar would find them. He was furious with her, confused, and hurt, but most of all he wanted her back safely. If she would just trust him, they’d figure this out. He knew there was far more to meet the eye than a simple betrayal.

Maybe two years ago Donald Ressler would have crowed “I knew it” to his superiors, pointed out that he never found Elizabeth Keen trustworthy, that he’d known all along that Reddington had some ulterior motive and Keen was one of his assets from the start. That was the Donald Ressler before Raymond Reddington had pumped his own blood into Donald’s arm to save his life. And then put a gun to his head, to protect Liz.

Which he had gone along with, willingly, though he had no doubt that Reddington would have pulled that trigger if he had to. He didn’t have to, though. It was a prop piece, and in that moment both men had known it, and there’d been a grudging moment of respect.

And even that was long before Audrey’s death, secret government organizations, blackmail files, and Harold Cooper’s manipulation. Ressler eased up from the gas pedal, not really wanting to announce his presence with full music and lights, and not really in the mood to get pulled over, either. Reddington was methodical, not rushed. Ressler wanted to act swiftly, but not idiotically.

He’d taken Aram with him to question Cooper, dropped the other agent off in the holding office with instructions to buddy up to the security detail and then hack the camera feed. “Something else is going on here,” Ressler murmured to Agent Mojtabai, and the man was all too happy to be thrown some kind of bone; some scrap that he could cling to and hope for Liz’s innocence.

Ninety seconds; that’s all Ressler could get from Cooper off-record. On record, the man said nothing. Off-record, he had told Donald everything he could think of, as succinctly as possible. Including what exactly Tom Connolly had threatened; the words that made Agent Keen pull the trigger.

He hadn’t had the time to think it over fully, but he’d written the phrase _trigger words_ down on a note card and stuck it in his inside jacket pocket. It was an old-school trick; something to let his brain stew over in the background while he actively searched other leads. The edges of the notecard would poke at him periodically through the lining of his jacket, if he moved a certain way or would make a noise. Eventually the thought or connection that was bugging him the most would surface.

One thought had come immediately upon speaking with Cooper, however. No matter what the fallout had been between Liz and Reddington, she hadn’t pulled out her gun until it was his life that had been threatened. Maybe it was the icing on the cake, and she would have pulled on Connolly if it had only been the taskforce threatened (especially given their history of danger and death - Christ, he missed Malek) but some instinct told him otherwise.

For whatever reason, Liz Keen was important to Raymond Reddington, and the man cared a great deal about her, whether Liz wanted to see it or not. Ressler knew her history, at least as far back as her file went, and he didn’t need a psych degree to know that whatever connection to her past Reddington represented was equally as important to Liz. As much as it pained Ressler to want to hope Liz was with that jackass of an ex, Tom Keen, he had no choice.

If she was with Reddington, they were already gone.

**************************

The District of Columbia was once what Liz would have considered living in the South. The Mid-Atlantic climate was tempestuous and steamy, much like a good beach read. Yet with the unpredictable winter they'd had, even as far south as Alabama the air was stinging and cold. It was fresh, though, which was more than she could say for that damned poultry truck.

Behind her, Reddington made a sound of disgust, and she looked back over her shoulder to check on him. Funny how he had always seemed so damned invincible, even after she had pressed her hands to his blood-soaked chest and urged him to stay alive. She had been so angry with him, so fed up with secrets and lies and manipulations that she had refused to acknowledge the vulnerability she saw in him as he recovered from that ordeal.

After all, this was Raymond Reddington, the man whom she had left breathless and unconscious after an explosion on a CIA blacksite rig in the middle of a damn ocean, and he had not only survived but burst into a room filled with gunmen and shot every single one of them in order to save her life.

Then he had survived a second explosion, and tracked her down again. It seemed inconceivable that one stupid little bullet could do so much harm. He was like a cockroach. The Cockroach of Crime.

She snorted and looked away quickly before he caught her amusement at his expense. Now was not the time to laugh. What was wrong with her? Hysteria, probably. Shock. She needed to get herself under control before she lost it completely.

It was the muttered curses and oblique references to Looney Tunes and sound of shoes scraping against pavement that finally sent her over the edge and she collapsed in laughter on the bench of the rest stop picnic table. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and it took two tries before she could clear her vision enough to take in the half-scowling, half-concerned visage of Red. He handed her a cold bottle of Coke from the vending machines, and she pulled herself together.

“Oh, Red,” she said finally, “you look like Hell.” He did, too. The swelling had gone down, but his face was a sickly shade of purple and yellow. Vulnerable.

_Lizzy, for Christ’s sake, stop hitting like a girl and take a swing at me. How else am I going to hide these handsome cheekbones? I’m not a chia pet; I can’t just grow a beard with one watering._

“You smell like it.” Red shuddered. “I can’t even imagine the shots we’ll have to get after that ride.”

She snorted again and took a sip of the blessedly cold and fizzy soda. “I swear to God I’m going Vegan after this. Foul little bastards.”

So exhausted was her mind that it took her a full minute to realize her unintentional pun, even after she registered the sound of Red’s choked-back laughter. “Lizzy…” he said in a pained voice. “Really?”

Liz shook her head and waved a frantic hand in defeat. “Please, no, don’t get me started again.” Luckily the soda proved distracting enough that she didn’t dissolve into idiotic giggles, but then it suddenly became difficult to swallow past the hard lump in her throat.

A hard squeeze at her shoulder brought her back from that cliff of despair and she met Red’s concerned expression. “Not yet,” he said. “I need you to hold it together a little longer, Elizabeth, and then I promise you can cry and scream to your heart’s content. But for now, I need you to take that duffel and go change again. We’ve got another ride coming.”

She sucked in a breath. It shook, but she gripped the handle of the duffel bag firmly. “As long as it’s not chickens again.” Good, her voice held steady.

His lip twitched. “Pigs. Luckily, they’re already dead,” he added when her eyes widened. “I hear bacon’s the fashionable thing these days. We’ll travel in style.”

“I’ll never get the smell out of my hair,” she bemoaned.

Red grinned. “That’s why I don’t have any.”

 

 

TBC

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The soliloquy referenced from Hamlet is the "to be or not to be" speech. Also, "Katya" is diminutive for Katerina (which is really Ekaterina). No, there's not an implied romance between Red and Liz's mother, but in this story's world, they were close. The world of espionage has a weird sort of intimacy between targets and assets, and I'll be exploring that a bit.
> 
> Edited after I realized what time of year the S2 finale took place in. Whoops. My head's in summer.


	3. Raymond Reddington

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some angst here. While not at odds with each other, both Red and Lizzy have some emotional baggage and ample time for reflection in this chapter. Lizzy learns a little truth of her past with Sam.

“Who the hell are you?”

Lithe and athletic, blonde hair pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail,  the stranger turned around and faced Ressler, with one raised eyebrow. “Hannah Ferris. I’m your new profiler.”

“No, you aren’t.” He slapped the files down on the table a little more sharply than he intended, but he was already out of temper from finding no trace of Dembe but a whole lot of empty warehouse. “I didn’t authorize any additions to this task force.”

“You didn’t need to.” She hadn’t held out her hand, merely tilted her head. “DOJ Criminal Division did. I’m not just a psych profiler, Agent Ressler, I’m a former Navy Seal. In the past ten years, I’ve taken down six drug cartels operated out of Afghanistan that funnelled money into Al Qaeda. I’ve consulted with the Bureau, with Homeland, TARP, and a dozen other programs. I have a doctorate in combat psychology and an underground MMA title. Which you’d know,” she pointed out, pulling the bottom file delicately out of the stack beneath his thumb, “if you’d bothered to read this file that Justice sent over this morning.”

Combat psychology? “Elizabeth Keen wasn’t a soldier,” he pointed out.

“But Raymond Reddington _was_ ,” Ferris countered. “Have you got the ex-husband yet?”

This last was said to Samar, who hadn’t volunteered any information to the interloper. She stood silently, leaning against the table where Aram sat ensconced in computer screens. The two women were eyeing each other up, Ressler noted. That was interesting. He wasn’t entirely certain he fully trusted Samar Navabi, but he had a high level of respect for her instincts.

“Fine,” she said, pulling out a stool. “Make your calls. I’ll wait.” She pointed to the cell phone that was already in Ressler’s hand, with the Deputy AG’s number up and ready to dial. “Tell her she owes me a $20. I said you wouldn’t talk to me until you talked to her.” She flashed him a smile. “Not that you have trust issues, Agent Ressler.”

Ressler held up the phone and took the woman’s file, edging back towards his office, but keeping one eye on her. Obviously, she had clearance, or she wouldn’t have made it inside. Not without a drill and a sizeable quantity of C-4. “Yes, Donald,” Robin’s gravel voice said in his ear, not even giving him the time to say hello, “you can trust her. I trust her.” After a pause, she continued, “Dr. Ferris worked with Cooper in Pakistan. He wanted her for the task force in the first place, but Diane Fowler filled that spot with Agent Malek. Knowing that Dr. Ferris was Cooper’s first choice...that might carry more weight with you than my word that she’s trustworthy.”

He looked out at the main room from his window, Liz’s desk things still littering the corner of his vision. Dr. Ferris still sat in a deceptively languid pose, dragging her pointed toe in a small circle while she tapped a pen impatiently against the side of her cheek. She wore flats, he noted, but her suit was well-tailored and the fabric looked like that stuff that never wrinkled. A step up from Liz’s is-it-sales-rack-day-at-Macy’s wardrobe, but still within a government salary range. He glanced at the pay grade in her file and made a low whistle. “She outranks me,” he said into the phone.

“By a few steps, but I wouldn’t worry about that. Hazardous zones tend to accelerate the general schedule.” The Deputy Attorney General laughed hollowly. “Besides, Dr. Ferris isn’t what one would call a leader. Or really much of a team player at all. Don’t try to order her around, Donald. Just listen to her. That’s why she’s there.”

Damn, he realized. He’d have to give her Liz’s desk.

******************

“Arkansas,” Lizzy whispered, so low that Red had to strain to hear her.

They were parked in one of the ubiquitous travel plazas that dotted the very special hellscapes that were American toll roads. The names of the restaurants might have changed in twenty-odd years, he thought, but nothing else had. Certainly not the burgers.

He shifted, stretched out on a palette of blankets in the back of this damnable covered pickup truck of Kate’s. To be more precise, it belonged to Ellery, Kate’s on-again, off-again partner, but it was Kate in her overalls, plaid shirt, and LL Bean boots that he associated most strongly with the truck. That was Kate’s real identity, when she wasn’t dressed as the nightmare form of his high school librarian.

Back when it hadn’t just been about the body count.

 _No_ , Ray, he chided himself, _it was always about the body count. You just used to be better at pretending otherwise._ “Other than the answer to the question ‘what did Tennessee’, what’s Arkansas?”

“Number twenty-seven,” Liz replied. He looked over at her, on her own palette of blankets with her back pressed against the cab. Her knees were drawn up under her chin and she nervously fidgeted with the buckle on her boots.

“License plates?” he guessed. The age-old road trip game of spotting as many different plates as possible. She had to have made bingo by now.

“Mmm,” she answered, still in a low voice. “We used to take road trips sometimes, Sam and I. He’d get these itches, he called them, to get on the open road, go see something new. ‘Hey Butterball, want to see the Grand Canyon?’” she imitated Sam’s cowboy accent. “We’d load up bags of candy. Back when supermarkets used to have those big aisles with the bins of candy, and fill the cooler with soda…”

She trailed off with a sharp intake of breath, and he closed his eyes. This was not really the time for this, but he braced himself anyway and sat up. He pulled the hood of his jacket over his head and reached out for Liz’s hands. They were like ice in his. She must be freezing, despite the sweater and coat he’d had tucked into her go bag. Winter’s last gasp before spring edged itself into the world.

He would never cease to marvel at how insensitive the world around him was to his shifting moods and the tone of his life. Winter, for them, was just beginning, and yet the world around them was about to break out of its cold shell, send new shoots of life out into the world. He used to love spring, back when he was a man and not a monster. Now, all he saw was the raw vulnerability of life - tender flowers and grasses, dead to late frosts, consumed by the hungry beasts of the world and their offspring.

The look of fragile trust in her eyes could be killed just as easily. He wasn’t entirely sure how to avoid it, and equally as unsure as to whether he wanted to.

“They weren’t just road trips, were they?” The pain in her voice cut him sharply and he closed his eyes again.

He opened them to study their intertwined fingers, hers still so cold. He’d have to watch her closely for shock. “No,” he answered at last. There were so many answers, so many falsehoods he wished he could tell her just to give her something, anything, except the gnawing emptiness of realizing that your entire life is a lie. He held onto her fingers, trying to keep her warm, keep her safe, while at the same time his words cut her heart to shreds.

“It’s not what you fear, Lizzy,” he said, squeezing her fingers again when she hadn’t moved. He let go long enough to bring his blankets over to join hers and sat down next to her, putting his arm around her back and drawing her close. She let him, which was a relief. If she’d pulled away from him again...he wasn’t sure how well he could handle that at the moment.

Her hair smelled like chamomile and eucalyptus. She’d dumped nearly the whole bottle of shampoo on her head after the escapade in the butcher’s truck and the chickens. They’d stopped in the motel only long enough to shower, change, and meet Ellery. Who was now taking her own sweet time making contact with the rest of the Originals (her term, not his - We’re not a rock band, Kate), but he trusted her implicitly. Ellery was the one who had put him in contact with Kate in the first place.

And Sam was the one who had put him in contact with Ellery.

Reddington sighed, and held Liz tighter. “Sam was my CI,” he said finally, and he felt her stiffen in surprise. She hadn’t expected any further explanation. “One of my unofficial assets. I had a whole network of people my superiors considered not worth their time, but I was a clever little Boy Scout, Lizzy. Do you know how you catch the Invisible Man?”

“You sprinkle flour on the floor and watch for his footprints,” she answered, tilting her head up at him. “Sam told me that.”

“Me, too.” He smiled in memory. “That was how he sold himself to me as an asset when I had him handcuffed on the mat of a boxing ring and was sitting on his back. Pity he never taught you to box; the man was a vicious contender in the squared circle. I went three rounds with him before I let him knock me out, and when he did the honorable thing and helped me come to, I swept his leg and had him cuffed before he could say ‘aw, hell’.”

Despite everything, he felt her shoulders shake with laughter. He sighed. “We became close friends, even when I shifted over to counter-intelligence and he became less useful - or at least, less obviously useful. Sam was always careful to never be seen with me when someone might be watching, but he was always there.” It took him a moment to work past the lump in his throat. “He was at my wedding. My wife almost named our daughter ‘Samantha’ because of him, but he talked her out of it.That was why I turned to him, Lizzy; why I knew he was the only person in the world I could trust with something as important as your life.”

She began to cry, and he pulled a blanket from the pile and tucked it around them both. “I didn’t realize until years later that you were likely the only person who might know where the fulcrum was hidden. I sought to protect you, not because of the fulcrum, not because of your parents, but because I simply could not bear the thought of another life lost to the hell I had found myself in. I told myself that if I could keep you safe, if you could have at least part of a normal life with a loving family and happy memories, then I could survive what I had to do, what...what I had to become. That there was something out there that was worth it all.”

His cheek felt cool, and he realized that he had also at some point shed tears. “Sam didn’t take you on road trips to perform covert operations. He wasn’t Tom, Lizzy. He took you away from time to time whenever the Cabal got a little too close to your trail. Sometimes, I managed to tip him off, but most of the time it was his own instinct, both as a criminal and as a father. He didn’t have to make up stories to keep you happy, but he did. By that point, you had already realized that he had a criminal past. He could have told you anything, but he chose to make the trips about you, to give you happy, glowing memories to pull out and cherish when the night finally came and darkness entered your life.”

She cried until Ellery returned to the truck, and for some time after they returned to the road. He held her until she fell asleep against him, head pillowed on his arm, one hand in his, the other wrapped beneath and around his knee. He was her anchor, the only steady thing in her life, and even if he was rusted and sharp around the edges, he knew she wouldn’t let go.

It tore at his heart to see her spirit so broken, but this was the crucible, and he was damn sure she’d make it through.

He turned his head and caught Ellery’s eyes in the rearview. She nodded, once, a sign that everything was proceeding as well as they could hope. Dembe was known to the FBI, so he provided the distractions. Kate, to some extent, might be known, depending on what Liz had shared with her colleagues, but Mr. Kaplan could disappear into the air as quickly as Raymond Reddington could. The authorities should pick up the dozens of false trails, and then stumble onto the one that led to Miami, if all was handled correctly.

Ellery Simpson was an unknown quantity to the FBI; neither criminal nor cop, she was simply a farmer who had a few dozen goats and sold handspun cashmere at the local markets in Wisconsin. And that’s all she really was, all she really did, unless Kate needed her, and then she did whatever Kate asked of her. In this case, it was driving them to the farm.

It was possible the Director knew about the farm. He knew about Katerina, and Katerina had known about the place. She had been one of them, once, in a way. It was possible her betrayal had reached that far, but he thought not. She hadn’t done it out of vindictiveness, but desperation.

He had long ago given up the urge to damn her for this mess. In her shoes, he would have done the same. Ray remembered Liz’s confrontation over her mother, her accusations of something as base as jealousy. Of course he had loved Katya; everyone loved her. That was why she was so damned good at her job. She was sweet and vulnerable and beautiful, but it wasn’t just the men. She was nothing so ordinary as a honeypot.

She had stood in his kitchen and cried in his wife’s arms, with Brenda and Carla both fussing over her and plying her with tea and Carla’s horrible oatmeal cookies. Red closed his eyes. He hadn’t thought about that night in decades, and he wasn’t ready for the pain that washed over him.

It was the remembered sound of footsteps hurtling around upstairs that made his breath catch. Two girls giggling and shrieking and when he went to check on them, lost in a flurry of ballet costumes and tiaras.

“Look, Daddy!” Charlotte cried. “Lizzy fits in some of my old costumes. I can give them to her.”

He leaned against the doorway, both amused and frustrated. He knew precisely what Charlotte was after; she’d wanted a baby sister ever since she held the Tomlins’ new kid six months prior. When outright demands had produced only a hail of laughter from Brenda, his daughter  - good Lord, she was so much like him that it was downright terrifying at times - resorted to all the subtlety a crafty eight-year-old could muster.

Katya’s kid, this little ball of dark curls and big eyes, would be the best of all possibilities to Charlotte - no diapers, no crying, just a little sister to drag around and play dress-up with, teach to dance and ride horses and play piano. Maybe, he thought, on some level Charlotte sensed the tension in her parents’ marriage. They were careful to keep it from her, but things had been bad for a while. But they were getting better. He was getting home more, and when he was home, he was there. He was present. He had noticed how the stiff and cold Brenda relaxed more when he made the effort to touch her, to hold her like he had when they were crazy idiot teenagers in love.

He had missed her smell. It had taken a locked bathroom door and the sound of a running bath to cover up her cries and the half-empty bottle of wine under the cupboard for him to realize what was so terribly clear: he had missed her, without even realizing that she was gone. He slept on the bathroom floor with her that night, on the new white bath mat in that horrible pink tiled bathroom that she loved so much.

He watched Charlotte play with the young daughter of a defecting KGB asset, and his heart clenched. They were planning another child, but they hadn’t told Charlotte yet. But now? How could they now? He was trying to get out, get a desk job. Something safe and local. They wanted another kid, and then maybe another. They wanted a farm and horses, like Brenda’s grandmother.

In that big pair of blue eyes, Ray saw his future unravel. It didn’t matter what he and Brenda had planned. Katerina Rostova had come into his house with her problems, and now those problems were his, and there was no way out of this for any of them. “‘Lizzy’?” he asked.

“She can’t say her name very well because she’s so little.” _No, he thought bitterly, because she was so Russian_. “She didn’t like Beth or Eliza, so we went with Lizzy.” Charlotte wrinkled her nose. “Though she says it like ‘lizard’.”

“LIZARD!” the girl threw her hands in the air and danced around in a circle while Charlotte giggled. Barely three, if that, still massively full of energy. She darted around and then collapsed on Charlotte’s big pink bean bag chair.

There was something familiar about the tilt of that child’s chin and her nose. He’d have to pry out the father’s name from Katerina, and that process would be laborious. Groaning inwardly, he watched the girls play for another moment before he became aware of Sam’s presence behind him. “Don’t get suckered in,” the older man advised.

“I’m not,” he protested in a whisper.

Sam raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re a giant softie with a weakness for kids and animals.”

“I am not!”

“Right, sorry, you’re Batman, invulnerable and loveless.” Sam shook his head. “Kid, that woman down there is poison, and just because she’s giving your wife some sob story about protecting her child doesn’t-”

“Doesn’t make it any less true, Sam,” Ray interrupted. “I don’t like it, and I don’t trust her, but she’s my asset and I have to protect her. That includes the kid.”

Sam huffed. “Cute little butterball,” he admitted. “Are you keeping her?”

“Jesus, Sam, she’s not a stray cat.”

“You’re planning for a second. Save you the effort. Though I guess the effort’s the fun part.” Sam pulled out a cigarette, but Ray plucked it out of his mouth.

“Not in the house, Brenda hates the smell. We’ll go out to the garden.”

“Sure,” Sam agreed, “anything to avoid your harem.”

He didn’t even bother to respond to that one, just glared. Sam shook his head and laughed. “Real wife, cover wife, hot Russian asset. What’s it like being Raymond Clarke? Even James Bond would be jealous.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he answered honestly. “I spend most of my time being Raymond Reddington these days.” That was supposed to change. God, he hoped it would. He had come to hate his alter ego, as Brenda called it. Carla had her own motive, most of which revolved around her daughter Jennifer, but he caught the way she looked at him sometimes, the way she made sure she brushed up against him at precisely the wrong time. It wasn’t helping things with Brenda.

Katerina sure as hell wouldn’t help things at all. There was nothing wrong with Brenda’s addition skills, and once the sob story in the kitchen wore off, she’d start to put together his long absences with dates in the Russian agent’s stories. It was one thing to know in the abstract that your husband had posed as another woman’s lover, but another to be confronted with that woman. Carla had been hard enough, but Carla was his partner, more or less. A trained CIA black-ops handler and encryption expert; he had convinced Brenda that Carla’s professionalism made any intimacy required by their cover story simply an act.

It was, on his part, mostly. And he had no real interest in Katerina Rostova aside from appreciation and respect, but he knew what she represented. It was the wealth of information and the horrible truths she carried that attracted him. Moth to flame. Brenda wouldn’t see that side of it, though. She’d just see the beautiful brunette. Hell, he thought. This was going to get messy before it got better.

He ducked back into the bedroom to say goodnight to Charlotte. Little Lizzy was already sacked out bonelessly on the bean bag and Charlotte was fishing out pajamas from her dresser drawer. He knelt down next to her. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said as he pulled her into a hug. “Good night.” A long pause, and he swallowed. “Charlotte, don’t get attached, okay? Lizzy isn’t going to be here very long; she can’t be. It isn’t safe for anyone if she stays, including her.”

The disappointment in the way she slumped against him nearly broke his heart clean in two. “I’m sorry, love. I’m so sorry.” His whispered platitudes wouldn’t help, he knew. She sniffled a few times, but then wiped her eyes. When she pulled away, her features were set firmly and he could see every bit of effort she was putting into not crying. Forget breaking his heart; to see this look on his daughter’s face was squeezing the very life out of him.

But then she touched his cheek, told him not to cry, and then nodded. “Okay, Daddy. I’ll try to get the tutu back from her.”

Damn this life, he thought then. Damn it _all._

And here he was now, twenty-five years later, holding an exhausted and emotionally drained Elizabeth. Things hadn’t been simple back then, but now they were so complicated that he barely knew which way was up. Nothing was the same, including him. Back then he had hated Raymond Reddington every bit as much as Donald Ressler might hate him now. Then he had come home to nothing but puddles of blood, and the man he might have been one day had vanished, reborn from the ashes into a terrible demon of retribution.

Raymond Reddington closed his eyes, pushing Raymond Clarke back into the dark shadows of memory. It shouldn’t still hurt this much. If anything in this life was ever fair, _it shouldn’t still hurt this much._

_*********_

_TBC_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the things I love most about the show are Reddington's silences and what he doesn't say. I saw this fic as an opportunity to get inside of his head and to show the memories and thoughts that lay behind the man's exterior.
> 
> I've invented a backstory that I think plugs most of the plot holes, but it's my own invention. I don't use much more than context clues from the show, and those could be interpreted just about any way.
> 
> Lizzington - don't worry. The Red and Liz in the present are very, very different people from who they were in Red's flashback. One of the things Red has to come to terms with in this story is how to fully relate to Lizzy now; how not to feel guilty over the memory of the small child he pulled out of a fire. And also, how much closer he is to her than he's ever really been to anyone, and what that means to him.


	4. Ellery Simpson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: I hope you are ready for some feels. There are some serious feels in this chapter.

The hand came out of nowhere, gripping the back of her head and forcing her down. Samar caught herself on the pavement and spun, kicking out hard with her right leg, aiming for her assailant’s knee, but they had already shifted and her leg met nothing. The inertia carried her off balance, and her attacker used that momentum to shove her down, knocking the wind out of her lungs.

“Agent Navabi,” a female voice said. “Stop and listen to me. We don’t have much time.”

Samar gasped as she managed to finally take a breath. When she inhaled, she felt the cold sharp knife against her throat. “You could have asked nicely,” she spat, thrusting her head forward to headbutt whoever it was that had her down.

The head wasn’t there and the knife had vanished faster than Samar could think. Instead, she found herself rolled up into a fetal position with a large weight on her back. “Really,” the voice drawled, “I promise I don’t want to hurt you. You’re good at this, Samar, but I’m better. We should get in the ring sometime, I’ll teach you some submission holds.”

“Ferris?” Samar gasped. “I knew you were up to something.”

“Well, yes, obviously. That’s why I chose to kick the crap out of you in a dark alley instead of approach you in a more civilized manner. I said stop,” the sharp elbow dug into her shoulder and neck, the shooting pain immobilizing her, “struggling.”

Her arm was twisted behind her, and a boot kept her ankles in place, pressure on the old injury she’d sustained in the Factory. Samar grunted, trying to get her other hand free, but a second boot closed down on her fingers and the arm held behind her was twisted sharply. “One more move and this arm breaks.”

Samar stopped struggling. She’d wait it out. At some point Ferris would tire; she just hoped that happened before the knife blade came back out. “Good,” Ferris purred.

Suddenly the pressure was gone and Samar fell forward, gasping. Samar whipped around into a defensive crouch. Hannah Ferris stood opposite, leaning casually against the brick wall. “You tracked me to my safehouse. Well done.” Ferris nodded. “This is one of several. There’s some sensitive information here, but then there’s sensitive information at all of them. Some of it’s even real,” she added with a small smile.

“Who are you?” Samar asked, touching her neck. There was a small bit of blood from where Ferris had pulled the knife away.

“A friend of a friend.”

“Reddington?” Samar frowned and then cursed herself. “Well done,” she said, standing up. “You just got me to admit it.”

Ferris smiled widely. “I did warn you.” Who the hell had trained this woman? That deceptively nonchalant pose disguised a fluid stance and the head tilt that read as contemplative was hiding the constant intake of information. She was excellently conditioned, and it would take an operative as experienced as Samar to spot it. “I don’t work for Reddington,” Ferris continued, “but I have a vested interest in the continuance of his existence. His business influences mine, and I have a marked interested in restoring the detente between his organization and the other one.”

Samar studied her for a long moment. There was something there in her otherwise blank expression; a spark in her eyes. “This is more personal than that.”

Ferris’s jaw twitched, acknowledging a clean hit. She looked away. “Fitch.”

“I’m sorry?” Samar frowned.

“Alan Fitch. I worked for him.” One shoulder shrugged. “Sometimes. I liked him. He didn’t deserve what came his way, and if you lay blame at anyone other than the man who took his place inside the organization, you don’t know how they work.”

Samar took out a gauze square from her jacket pocket. She took enough hits in the course of her daily life that she had a portable first aid kit on her at all times. Holding the gauze to her bleeding neck, she asked, “And you do?” A knowing look was Ferris’s only answer.

“I don’t know how to contact Reddington, or his people.” Samar sighed. “He’s pulled up stakes completely.”

“I didn’t really think it would be that easy. But he did put you inside the task force to keep watch over Elizabeth Keen, didn’t he?”

“Among other things,” Samar acknowledged. “But it was mostly about Keen.”

Ferris nodded. “We’ll talk about those other things another time. What I need now is for you to understand that you and I are on the same side. It may just be for the moment, but we’re after the same thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“The men who murdered your brother.”

She knew it had to be coming, but it still made her wince. “Reddington already tried that route with me and it was a dead end.”

“Then why did you continue to work for him?”

“Assist him,” she corrected. “I never took money or orders from that man. He held up his end of the bargain; he gave me the Scimitar. I respect someone who does what they say they will do, and if nothing else, Reddington always fulfills his promises.”

Ferris chewed on the inside of her cheek as though there were words she wanted to add but didn’t. “The Scimitar told you there was more to your brother’s death than you knew, didn’t he? That there was more to your brother?”

“I’m done answering your questions.”

“Come with me, Samar. I’ll give you the intel, and then you can make up your mind. Report me to Ressler or don’t: it’ll be your choice.”

Samar flexed her fingers. “But if I leave now?”

“I will kill you,” Ferris replied simply, “and attack this problem from a different angle. It’s what I do, Agent Navabi, and have no doubt that I do it spectacularly well.”

****************************

Liz woke in a soft bed that smelled like lavender and cotton, with yellow sunlight streaming through a window draped with patchwork curtains. They looked like little squares of stained glass. She blinked as a wave of déjà vu washed over her. Somehow, she knew without looking that there would be a little worn school desk in the corner of the room, and a braided rug on the floor.

Shaking, she slid out of bed. Warm flannel pajamas enveloped her body, about three sizes too large. She had to tighten and re-tie the drawstring at the waist. They were old, but they too held a familiar smell, like the bedding. Lavender and...cedar, maybe? Like they’d been tucked away in a chest somewhere.

Liz located a pair of socks and a long, hideous terrycloth bathrobe that she wrapped around herself. It was chilly. She smelled bacon and eggs and coffee, and her stomach grumbled at each recognition of scent. Something uncurled inside of her and she felt like running downstairs to discover whatever surprise awaited her. Like it was Christmas morning.

But it wasn’t Christmas, this wasn’t her house, and she was a fugitive wanted for murdering the Attorney General of the United States. Hell, she’d been a killer since age four.

Her mind brought up the heartbroken, weary face of Reddington, and she shook herself. No, she wasn’t a killer. Not...not intentionally, not either time. She hadn’t meant to shoot Connolly any more than she had meant to pull the trigger on her own father. But they were hurting her, hurting them, hurting him.

Liz closed her eyes and sat down on the foot of the bed. Reddington. She remembered the fury building inside of her at every word out of Connolly’s mouth, but the gun wasn’t in her hand until he had threatened Reddington. His face, the blood leaking from the corner of his mouth, the terror in his eyes as he reached for her when he was laying on that gurney - the terror that wasn’t for his own life, but for hers - it had all obscured her vision until it was Connolly that she saw standing over Red’s body and laughing, baiting her.

...baiting. She froze, and her eyes shot open. The case with the mind control, Sub-Project Seven. Her test results.

Jesus Christ, had she been manipulated? Had Connolly goaded her into drawing down on him, but underestimated her and gotten himself shot?

No, damn it. She couldn’t shift the blame. Maybe she could forgive herself for what happened when she was a child, but she was a grown adult capable of distinguishing from right and wrong even in dire circumstances. She had crossed the line and left Cooper and the others heartbroken on the other side. His voice calling her name would haunt her until the day she died. _Keen_.

Where the hell did that leave her now? Even if her name was cleared somewhere down the road, what life did she really have to go back to? Her husband was a lie, her name was a lie, her very life was a fairytale illusion crafted by the unlikeliest of godmothers.

Sail away with...with Jacob? Into the sunset? That was every bit the illusion the house and the dog and the adoption had been. That last time together on the boat, that was goodbye. He'd known it, she thought now. It had been obvious in the way he gripped her hair, her skin. He knew it was the last time before she did. Even before all the lies surfaced, her work had always come first, no matter how she swore it wouldn’t.

He always knew what she wanted, though. That was why he'd been so good at his job. At her. A real relationship would have been over long before theirs. No, that option was better left closed. She'd run mad trying to chase the dream that never existed, trying to find some echo of Tom Keen in Jacob Phelps.

As much as she felt, looking around this room, like she’d woken up in some sort of fantasy Narnia full of life and a delicious-smelling breakfast, this place...this was real. Her past with Reddington was real. Confusing, mysterious, but real, and it was time she faced reality head on.

Something about this place was familiar, and she’d learned to recognize that little tickle around the corner of her childhood memory. She’d been here before; could see snippets of it through the brief, confused perspective of childhood memories.

There would be rubber treads on the stairs. A big yellow lab sleeping by the wood-burning stove. Even the rumble of voices downstairs felt familiar. One of them was Red - she’d know that distinctive voice anywhere. It had inflicted a variety of effects on her senses over the time she’d known him: fear, confusion, anger, pain, comfort, assurance. She had the feeling that she had sat here before, had heard his voice floating up the stairs, accompanied by the smell of coffee.

This feeling of safety that had enveloped her was in part memory, but it was also current. Hell might howl outside that window, but she could face it if Red was there, too. _I’m here, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you._

God, that bacon smelled good. Leave it to Red to call her bluff on turning Vegan. She stood and found a waiting pair of slippers. Breakfast first, she decided, then they’d figure out what came next.

*******************

The knock on his office door woke Ressler with a start, but the smell of fresh coffee was welcome. The door swung open and Dr. Ferris appeared with a tray of coffee and a grease-stained bag from Dunkin Donuts. “Couldn’t find a Krispy Kreme,” she said as she offered him the bag. “There ought to be a law.”

“What’s this?” Ressler asked, taking the bag.

She blinked. “Breakfast.” When he raised an eyebrow, she smiled. “Peace offering. Wrong foot, and all that. I wasn’t sure if you’d like bacon or sausage, so I got both. Take your pick, I’ll eat whichever one you don’t want. I have no preferences. Same with the coffee. One has sugar and cream, the other’s black, but there’s cream and sugar in the bag just in case you prefer some heathen combination of cream but not sugar. Or vice versa.”

He stared at her, trying to process the stream of words and practically unholy amount of energy this strange blonde creature emitted. Dr. Ferris dragged over a chair from the corner rather than take Liz’s old chair, but she perched her foot on the corner of Liz’s desk. Her desk now, he supposed. And he ought to move into Cooper’s office, when it came to it. He just...he didn’t want to.

He didn’t want anything to change.

But it had, and there was ample and rather attractive evidence to that effect picking off the lid of her coffee and blowing across the surface. “That doesn’t really work,” he offered.

She merely looked up at him and raised an eyebrow, but there was something in the knowing glint in her green eyes that reminded him of someone. Liz, probably, considering all his thoughts were focused on his former partner. “You know she’s gone, right?”

Ressler winced as the hot coffee hit his lip. “Yeah. I saw the statement from the traffic cop about the ambulance. We’ve traced them as far as Alabama, but from there the trail disappears.”

“There was a lead on Miami, last I saw before I left last night.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. It was one of Reddington’s known associates, though, so I wouldn’t put much stock in it. We’ve got a tail down there, just in case, but…” He shook his head. “We’re starting from ground zero, which is why you’re here, I take it.”

“Robin had an inkling, yeah. It is Raymond Reddington we’re dealing with, and he’s been on the run a long time.” She chewed her lip in thought for a moment. “We should still try and track down the ex. I saw the files from the earlier case with him - he’d been gathering a lot of intel on her, and some of it was connected to Reddington. I’d like to know what the deal is with them.”

“You and everyone else on this task force,” Ressler said bitterly. “It was clear he was manipulating her from the start, but we could never figure out why.”

“Was he?”

“Was he what?”

Dr. Ferris offered a shrug of her own and took a sip of coffee. “Manipulating her.”

Ressler wanted to argue that of course he was, but he stopped himself. Dr. Ferris was baiting him, testing him to see whether or not he’d listen to her. When he sat back in his chair instead of arguing, she gave him a small, tight smile of approval. “I think he was toying with her a little, yes,” Ferris continued, “but only to see how she’d react. I spent most of last night reading over the files and while I could do with another full read or two, what stood out to me most was that nearly everything he’s done has something to do with protecting Elizabeth Keen.”

“Meera had a theory that he might be Liz’s real father. She was adopted...sorry, you know that from her file.”

Dr. Ferris tilted her head curiously. “Is that what you think, Agent Ressler?”

“No,” he admitted. “I’ve seen him look at her, and some of those looks were anything but paternal. Some of those looks made me feel paternal, like I wanted to step in before he took a bite out of her.” He sipped his slightly cooler coffee, the one without cream and sugar.

“So he was attracted to her. Understandable; she’s a pretty lady, Elizabeth Keen. Are they lovers, then?”

Ressler shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. She was far too wound up over Tom, and she blamed Reddington for taking that life away from her.”

“It’s easy to blame the messenger when you hate the message.” Ferris pulled over the bag and took out a handful of soggy hash browns, which she ate without complaint. How the hell did she stay so fit?

He hadn’t realized that he’d wondered that out loud until she laughed heartily. “I don’t diet,” she explained, “but I do employ my spare time beating the crap out of things. And people. Mostly things, though.” She made a fist, and he remembered the MMA connection in her file. “Returning to our conversation, though - yes, it’s almost certain she’s with Reddington. Whatever their connection is, and I will figure it out, it’s important and deep.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Agent Ressler, you don’t forgive someone for killing your father and essentially ruining your life unless you acknowledge that he had a damn good reason for doing so. Raymond Reddington was responsible for the death of Sam Milhoan, Elizabeth Keen’s adoptive father, and the only family she was ever close to. Milhoan was terminally ill, and in great pain. Maybe it was a mercy killing, but even then… It’s difficult to get past such a thing, unless there’s significant provocation to do so. I’m not sure her job was enough on its own to justify it, especially given the cost to her personal life. Whatever it is between Reddington and herself, however…”

Ressler nodded in agreement. “That’s what we need to discover.”

“Yep.” She fished out a chocolate donut from the bag and split it in half. He took the sugar-coated olive branch from her fingers and met her eyes in understanding. She was in. He wasn’t ready to fully trust her, but he’d listen.

“What about you?” he asked. “If you were Liz, what would get you past everything Reddington’s done to you? Why would you still trust him?”

Dr. Ferris toyed with her half of the donut for a long minute. “You won’t like the answer.”

“What, a criminal past? She was always part of his organization? She’s…” _Shit._ “She loves him,” he said flatly.

She hadn’t pulled her weapon until it was Reddington’s life at stake. Back during the mess with Berlin, when she found out that Red was Berlin’s primary target, she was ready to throw her own career to the wind in order to warn him away from capture. She had released the funds out of the Monarch Douglas Bank to cover Red’s deal with Berlin in order to save his life. Every single time Liz acted out against orders, it was always - always - to protect Reddington’s life.

He pulled out the notecard from the day before and looked over the words he’d written. Trigger words. That couldn’t be the whole of it, he thought, but it was part. Something still bothered him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Yet it was obvious that one way to get Elizabeth Keen to act irrationally was to threaten the life of Raymond Reddington.

“She said to me once that Reddington was the only person with answers about her past,” he said.

“Do you think that’s enough to want to keep him alive? To put your own life in his hands?” Ferris looked over his shoulder. “I think that’s maybe what she told herself. She probably believed it. When I was kid around, I don’t know, six or seven, I was angry with my parents. They were fighting. They did that a lot. I took a piece of chalk and drew a line across my bedroom door and told my father that they weren’t allowed to come inside until they made up. He just looked at me and then calmly stepped over the line. He took the chalk from me and told me not to draw lines I wasn’t willing to defend, because they could disappear so easily.”

“You’re saying that whatever lines Keen drew between herself and Reddington have vanished?”

Ferris looked at the donut half that was still uneaten and sighed. “I’m saying there’s a much, much deeper story here, Agent Ressler. If we chase them in the present, we have no chance of catching them. Past trends are indicators of future behavior. We have to find out who they were once to find out who they are now. That’s how we succeed.”

“Then let’s get started.” He stood.

Dr. Ferris turned back to him and smiled. “You should maybe change your shirt first. Take a shower, too. Get some proper coffee and not this swill. In the meantime, I’m going to make a mess.”

She pulled out a heavy stack of files and set them down with a thud on her desk.

Her desk. It was her desk now.

**********************

Stepping through the farmhouse door, Ray had immediately regretted his decision to come here. As soon as his feet touched the old wood steps, all his efforts to push Raymond Clarke back into the recesses of memory began to crumble. There was too much history here; the place was steeped in it. But this house he couldn’t demolish with cleansing fire to sweep the demons back under the rug.

This house was the genesis of Raymond Reddington the criminal.

He hadn’t slept a wink after Ellery lugged a groggy Elizabeth upstairs to the same bedroom she had put her in as a child. “Comfort,” Ellery had explained. “She loved this place. She was happy here.”

“I couldn’t bring her back to you, you know that.” His throat felt like someone had been at it with sandpaper, and he winced as Ellery cleaned up his stitches in the kitchen. He had been hesitant to remove his shirt with Lizzy in the house as neither one of them were emotionally prepared to deal with any further revelations that night. But after Ellery assured him that Liz was out cold and snoring away, he let her tend to him. Someone had to, and he just didn’t have the will to do it himself. “I couldn’t be sure who else knew. He found her here. Someone else could have just as easily.”

Ellery snorted. “Well, I’m still here, so clearly he didn’t tell anybody. You don’t think they would have killed me long ago? He double-crossed them. They wouldn’t have known about this place, especially since she was his ace of spades.” She swabbed at his chest. “Poor thing. Still, I’m sure Sam was a hell of a father. I always told him he’d be great with kids.”

He remembered one of those conversations. He had participated in it, laughing at Sam, holding Charlotte on his lap when she was around three or four. His hair was long, then, the foppish mop of the mid-80s, and she was threading all her little plastic hair barrettes through it.

“Oh, hell, Ray. Me and my big mouth,” Ellery sighed, putting a hand on his shoulder. That’s when he noticed a wetness on his cheek. He hadn’t allowed himself the luxury of losing control long enough to cry over his lost child in decades, but now...everything he had tried to hold together was coming apart at the seams. He knew this time would come, when he’d have to face everything again, but he’d hoped that time would allow him some distance from the memories.

Without really giving much thought to it, he leaned his head forward onto Ellery’s flannel-clad shoulder and cried. Really cried, with silent pain and the raging fury he had felt twenty-five years ago when Kate Kaplan had found him sitting in shock on the floor of his living room, trying to make sense of the blood stains around his daughter’s piano. He didn’t scream this time, not like back then, because now he still had something to protect and she was sleeping peacefully upstairs.

He stood now on the porch in the early morning light, looking out over the farm, and even despite the terrible things that had happened, this place radiated peace. Maybe it hadn’t been the best choice for his own sanity, but this would be good for Elizabeth. Ellery was right; this place had been full of happiness for the child Lizzy had been, however briefly.

She might remember the barn, but that was a risk he was willing to take. If she did, then that might be for the best. If she understood the kind of man her father had been, maybe she wouldn’t allow herself to be eaten by guilt.

Ray didn’t really trust himself to talk about it with her. There was too much...there was simply too much.

He shook himself now, and sat down on Ellery’s old wicker chair. He watched the chickens in the yard, which made him think of the feathers sticking out of Liz’s hair in the truck, and he chuckled. With the weight of the world bearing down on them, she had picked a feather out of her hair, tossed it up and blown it straight at him with a look of superior annoyance. All around them the chickens had clucked and their lives fell apart, and he had strained not to laugh in spite of all his worries and fears.

She was remarkable.

Unexpected, as well. Oh, he had some idea of the woman she’d grown into. After all, watching her from afar had become his favorite little hobby. Like bird-watching, only vastly more entertaining. All the trials and tribulations of her turbulent adolescence and young adulthood, and when she’d finally settled on the FBI as a career, he had laughed himself silly with the delicious irony of it all.

He enjoyed people, and she had become of his favorites, without her knowledge. Turning himself in had been a huge gamble on a number of fronts, and if he were completely honest with himself, it had been the opportunity to speak with her, to get to know this spitfire personality up close that had sealed the deal. Besides, his plan to protect her without involving himself directly had backfired disastrously, and was still continuing to invent new and painful complications.

Ray sighed. He had told himself that he would show only a certain side to Elizabeth, let her think what she would. That he was toying with her, that he had some ulterior motive. He always did, in truth, but he needed to keep the chess pieces moving; he was playing a dozen games at once and couldn’t afford to lose any of them, so that made it easy.

Then she had stabbed him in the neck with a pen, railed at him, challenged him in a way he hadn’t been challenged in years, and his interest had grown. He had broken his own rule about setting boundaries, and true to form those lines had rapidly disappeared. When she confronted him about Tom after that fiasco with Gina Zanetakos, he had been frustrated at the setback in getting her to realize the truth about her husband.

She was far more deeply entrenched in the lies than he thought, and it had startled him how tenaciously she clung to it. He found her husband unworthy of her affection, but she had no such reasons to believe so, and he discovered then that Elizabeth Keen held on to what she loved with a ferocity that should not be underestimated. He found it maddening, but his respect for her had deepened.

He hadn’t realized that respect and simple affection had become anything more until she found out about Sam. The hurt and betrayal in her voice, her face, had cut him in ways he didn’t know he could still be cut. He should have left, should have let her be, but when she showed up to stop him from leaving, he couldn’t go anywhere but closer to her.

Still he hadn’t really understood just how far he had let her in until she pulled away from him after he found her drugged and hypnotized in Luther Braxton’s custody. He should have told her, should have explained more about the fulcrum just like Dembe had told him to do all along. Maybe then she would have trusted him enough to not turn away from him, but he had just wanted to keep her safe. The less she knew, the safer she’d be.

Dembe had never agreed with that, and he always thought that in many ways, Dembe Zuma was a far wiser man than Raymond Reddington would ever be.

They had crumbled anyway, all his efforts to keep her safe. He hadn’t planned on what she would do. He had pushed her to find Leonard Caul so that someone out there would know what the fulcrum was, have that information so that one day, maybe, the Cabal would lose. There was no part of him that expected Lizzy to march into the Director’s office in a bold attempt to save his life.

He still wasn’t entirely sure whether it was to save his life for its own sake, or to keep the only source of answers about herself alive. She had told him once that she cared about him, and maybe she did, a little. He had hurt her badly, though, and while they might stand together now as allies, the gulf between them as man and woman was still as deep and complicated as it ever was.

He really shouldn’t even entertain those thoughts. He wasn’t her father, but he was old enough to be. But she was beautiful and brave, strong and clever, and every time he looked at her he felt lost. He had no right to want her smiles for himself, to speak to her about seduction, to hold her close and bury his nose in her soft hair. He was even less deserving than Tom.

By and large, he had held those urges at bay. It was easier when she was upset, when she needed him to be the strong one. It was harder when she stood up to him, when he looked around an unexpected corner and found her there, smirking. When she said she cared about him, the sheer terror of it left him cold. He might indulge in this twisted love, allow himself to acknowledge how he felt as long as he never brought it to fruition. He couldn’t imagine how it ever could, even if he wanted, so maybe there was no harm in letting her think she cared a little. It was easier to get her to trust him if she cared, and if he was going to keep them both alive through this, he would need her trust.

Tom Keen or Jacob Phelps or whatever else he went by now had been a double-edged sword. There between them, always, whether Red needed him to be or not. When he found out she’d been with Tom again, he only had himself to blame for it. It had been a choice between putting her in danger and driving her away, and he’d half-known it would be Keen she would turn to when she stormed out. Maybe it would have been better if she’d allowed Tom to take her away. Red had thought he could protect her better, but clearly that wasn’t the case.

His self-recriminations were interrupted by the screen door and he looked around to see the object of his thoughts juggling two coffee mugs and a plate of bacon. A piece stuck out of her mouth and she looked sheepish.

And just like that the clouds in his mind parted. Coffee, bacon, and a beautiful woman. He smiled.

*************************

“Whoah,” Aram said. “What is all this?”

Ressler stopped beside him, having darted back to his apartment in DuPont for a shower, shave, and a fresh suit. He felt more focused, refreshed, undoubtedly what Dr. Ferris had been after when she shoved him bodily from the office earlier.

Samar joined them, picking bits of string from her hair. “A web,” she supplied helpfully.

Beyond the entry, the main floor of the Post Office had been transformed. Ferris had told him she intended to make a mess, and he couldn’t argue. Five boards had been set up in a circle, each labeled with a decade - ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, ‘00s, ‘10s. On each board were pictures and news articles, snippets from old case files, everything connected here and there by long pieces of string or lines drawn by dry-erase marker.

“Samar, where’s the tape?”

“To your left, Hannah.”

“You’re on a first-name basis now?” Ressler asked quietly.

Samar offered him a small smile. “We had a talk. Girl to girl.”

“Uh-huh.”

Samar shrugged. “I’m not sure if I like her very much yet, but she’s good. Really good. I went over her work with Cooper in Pakistan. It’s solid.” She looked at him and he saw the unspoken message: Dr. Ferris was clean, by Samar’s sources at any rate.

“Why,” Aram said in alarm, “are there things taped to my monitor?”

“Leads,” Ferris said. “You pick what order to pursue them in, but they’re things I thought worth checking out. Which you’ll learn about in a minute.” She looked to Ressler. “Ready to start when you are, Agent Ressler.”

He looked over her work slowly, taking in some connections he’d made before and some he’d missed. Then he reached over for a stool and took a seat. “Ladies first, Dr. Ferris.”

“How charmingly chivalrous. If you insist.” She waved to the boards arrayed behind her. “Some of you, particularly Agent Ressler, are well familiar with the breadth and span of Raymond Reddington’s life up until this point. Or, at least, with the life that we can trace. There are holes, as there are with any criminal entity, particularly one so adept at making people and things disappear.”

She pulled the board labeled with the 1990s closer. “But do you know how you catch the Invisible Man? You sprinkle flour on the floor and watch for his footprints.” Ferris traced the line between an early photo of Raymond Reddington and a childhood picture of Elizabeth Keen. It was captioned _Disneyland, 1995_ and showed Liz, her father, and a woman labeled as Aunt June. Ressler vaguely remembered seeing the picture at one point in Keen’s background check file. “Raymond Reddington is the very best there is at becoming invisible, but his footprints are all over the life of Elizabeth Keen. We just have to find them all.”

She took a photo out of another file and walked to the 1980s board, pinning it up and writing 1987 underneath it. It was a woman, seated on a swing with the sunlight behind her obscuring most of her face, holding a small girl. “This was pulled from Elizabeth Keen’s smartphone. She’d deleted it, but it was still in the cloud.” Ferris tapped her finger against the woman’s face. “Before he died, Attorney General Tom Connolly’s office alleged that they had proof that Elizabeth Keen is the daughter of a notorious KGB agent called Katerina Rostova. I think this is her. The child is almost certainly Elizabeth, or whatever her birth name actually is. We need to find out anything and everything we can about Katerina Rostova, including her connection to Reddington. Before he turned traitor, Reddington was in Counter-Intelligence and his specialty was Russia.”

Ressler stepped forward and peered at a series of passport scans, all of them in Russian and featuring various photographs of a young Reddington. “Where did you get these?” he asked. “I was lead agent on Reddington’s case for five years and I’ve never seen any of them.”

Ferris shook her head. “You wouldn’t. Your investigation was hobbled from the start by the US Intelligence community. There are still a lot of things Reddington was involved in, things he might know or secrets that he hasn’t sold yet that scare the hell out of the Agency. They want him found, but not by the FBI. They just wanted you to do the dirty legwork.”

“What’s different now?” he asked.

She held up a copy of the paper. The headlines about the Senate hearings, alleged shadow organizations, and Ressler ran a hand over his face. “Of course.” The bigger picture. Liz was always urging him to look at things like Reddington did. Ressler rocked back on his heels. “Jesus Christ. Is that what all of this was about? Everything? This cabal, as Reddington calls it...this was why he turned, why he fled.”

 _I don’t know how you did it, betraying the flag_ … What if it had been the flag that had betrayed him first?

Ferris turned away and pointed to the picture of Naomi Highland when she was Carla Reddington, and a young, pretty redheaded girl. Jennifer Reddington. “He still abandoned his family,” she pointed out. “Things are more complicated than simply painting someone as a good guy or a bad guy. This onion has a lot of layers.”

“So which one do we start with?” Aram asked.

It was Samar that answered. “Katerina Rostova. We start where Elizabeth started, literally. With Katerina Rostova. Reddington’s connection to her mother will lead us to how and why he’s connected to Elizabeth. Which I think we all know is not as simple as paternity.”

Aram huffed. “So that’s still fifty bucks I’m out, then?”

Samar smiled. “If anyone looked at me the way Reddington looked at Elizabeth Keen, I can assure you my response would not be filial. Yes, you lost that bet.”

As amusing as Aram’s expression was, this was sidetracking them. “Samar, do you have any sources through Massad you can scrub? I’ll get on the phone with Kat Goodson and see what I can fish out of her.”

Ferris tilted her head at him. “Kat Goodson? Hm. I might have something you can use. If she gives you resistance, tell her you know about Kabul.”

“What happened in -”

“Just tell her.”

*********************

“I’ve been thinking,” Liz said tentatively.

Reddington didn’t reply, merely sipped his coffee patiently. The mug he held had an off-color joke about Texas and the size of things therein. He wore a faded old denim shirt under a flannel-lined corduroy jacket that smelled faintly of hay and probably belonged to Ellery. She was broad-shouldered and well-muscled despite her age, and they had similar proportions. Somehow, she doubted Ellery Simpson owned a single stitch of women’s clothing.

It was odd to see Red in anything but a suit, but she was beginning to understand that his fine suits and hats were a form of armor; a persona he wore like a glove. Despite the casual farm attire he wore now, he still emitted presence and personality like a beacon.

He had left the lion’s share of the bacon for her, and she toyed with a piece between her fingers as she regarded him. When he turned to look at her, his expression was guarded, but not apprehensive. “You remember this place?” he asked gently.

“Yes,” she replied. “Very vaguely, and it’s mostly feelings, but yes. Is that why you brought me here?”

“Partially,” he answered. “You’d been happy here, once, and I thought with everything…” Red trailed off and looked away, out over the hills beyond the porch. “I thought it would help to be in a peaceful place during the worst upheaval of your life. It helped me,” he added, looking back at her, and his eyes held a well of understanding.

She reached out for his hand automatically, and he laughed, dabbing the bacon grease off her fingers with his napkin. “Lizzy,” he chided. “Just because we’re in the country doesn’t mean you get to have the manners of a savage.” He tucked her hand into his, and its reassuring warmth made her sigh and tuck her head against the cushioned wicker of her chair.

After a handful of minutes sitting peacefully, she said, “I don’t want to just hide away, Red.”

“I know, Lizzy.”

“We can’t let them get away with this. With everything they’ve done. Before you say anything,” she interrupted him, lifting up their joined fingers to point one of them at him, “I know it’s not that simple. If it was that simple, you’d have done it twenty-odd years ago when all of this started for you.”

He looked at her expectantly. “Red,” she said softly, clutching his hand closer, “what did they do to you? Why did you run all those years ago?”

_Was it all her fault?_

He sighed, as though he could hear her unspoken question, and maybe he could. Reddington knew her far better than she wanted to admit. With great effort, as though he had to retrieve the words from a locked safe deep inside his heart, he told her. “They killed my family. My wife, my...my daughter. The only promise I’ve never been able to keep. I told them I’d be home before midnight Christmas Eve, and I wasn’t. And they died.” He looked at her again and the hardness and fury she saw in his eyes was terrifying. “My family died, Lizzy, and I wasn’t there.”

She swallowed past the hard lump in her throat, but her voice was strained. “Was it because…”

“It was before then. It was why I was there the night of the fire. I wanted answers and I thought your father had them.”

“Naomi Highland. Jennifer…”

He shook his head. “Many things, but not...not them.” Reddington let go of her hand and stood, drawing in a shaking breath. He went to the railing and leaned over it, bowing his head.

She stood, not bothering to slide her feet back into the slippers, barely registering the cold wood through her socks. Liz placed her hands on his back, her own breath hitching in her chest. “I’m sorry, Red. I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t turn around. “For what, Lizzy? It wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault, you need to know that.”

It just felt so overwhelming and awful. That lives could be destroyed so completely, that a family could suffer so much. God, _they had killed his child._ She couldn’t even fathom how such a thing would make her feel. She had been ready to tear Reddington apart when Tom had been stabbed.

“You didn’t get your answers, did you? Because I had killed him.” Liz leaned against his back, tempted to put her arms around him, but fearing that he’d pull away. That he’d blame her despite what he said. That he’d leave her here alone.

_That no one would know she was here, alone. No one knew and it was getting hotter, and she was coughing. There was so much smoke._

Red turned around and reached out to her, and she gasped.

_She screamed and yelled and the door burst open, a man tore the closet open and reached for her. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, sweetheart, just hold on. Hold on tight!” He took one of the shirts from the closet and wrapped it around one hand, breaking the glass in the window while the other hand held tight to her. Flames licked around the edges of the window, but he pushed her through and she fell onto the bushes, crying as the branches tore at her._

_She looked up but the man was having a hard time getting through. He was hurt, his face bleeding, he was coughing in the smoke and the flames were worse. She grabbed a rock from the hedges and stood on it, reaching up to pull him through. He was halfway and the flames were tearing at his back. He would be burned! She grabbed his collar and pulled, and a jagged piece of glass caught her hand and wrist, tearing at the flesh. She screamed, but didn’t let go. She just pulled and pulled and finally the man came tumbling out into the bushes and then the snow. The last thing she remembered was the night sky, lit up by the fire, and a face filling her vision, asking her if she was okay as he wound a scrap of his shirt around her wrist. “Lizzy! Lizzy, stay with me. Can you hear me?”_

“Lizzy!” Strong hands shook her and she looked up into that same face, decades older but every bit as worried. “Lizzy, can you hear me?”

The enormity of the truth washed over her, and she nodded through the tears that overwhelmed her. Red had saved her life. And she had saved his. She looked down at her scar. The glass on the window. “You pushed me through the window,” Liz said, “and told me to be brave. My father, he…”

“Elizabeth,” he whispered, pulling her close. “Don’t. Don’t do this to yourself, please.”

“He set the fire,” she said. “He was going to kill us. He kidnapped me, he lured my mother there, and he was going to kill us to get back in with them.”

He tucked her head against his chest. “I didn’t think you knew.”

“That’s what they were arguing about,” she said into his shoulder. “When I shot him, that’s what they were arguing about, what he was yelling at her. But you were with her, and he didn’t know. My mother…”

“I tried to get her out, after you,” he said. “But I couldn’t. She just...stood there screaming, and I couldn’t get to her. Every time I got close, she moved deeper in until the roof collapsed, and…”

Liz pulled back and cupped his face in her hands. “It doesn’t matter. Red, it doesn’t matter now. You saved me, and I saved you. We’re here, now. And Red?” He placed one hand over hers, the other still pressed against the small of her back. He turned his face into her palm briefly, pressing his lips ever so faintly to her scar. Then looked at her, finally, and for the first time she felt like she was seeing him as he really was. No masks, no personas, no lies. This was the man she remembered from the night of the fire, that fierce knight that had always lived at the edges of her memory and her life, and she trusted him with every fiber of her being. “Red, I swear to God, we are going to get the bastards that did this to us.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suck it, DaddyGate.


	5. Kat Goodson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Janel Moloney's character Kat Goodson from "Luther Braxton" makes a reappearance here.

“This is everything,” Goodson said, handing Ressler a thin file as he sat in her passenger seat. The heat was blasting, and out on the field beyond the parking lot, her ten-year-old son was running track with a pack of other Northern Virginia suburbanites. The landed gentry, as he thought of them. He’d take his six-hundred-and-ten-square-feet-if-you-squint-sideways apartment in the city any day. 

He raised an eyebrow. “Everything?”

“Everything I have. It isn’t much, but then the woman you want to know about is essentially little more than a phantom.”

“I’m not much for ghost stories, Ms. Goodson.”

He could tell she was barely restraining the urge to roll her eyes and kick him out of her car. “Neither am I, Agent Resser, but what little I know isn’t much help. Katerina Rostova was supposedly the USSR’s top agent, and I mean top.” She pointed to the file. “The agent you knew as ‘Berlin’? He caused hundreds of deaths, millions in property damage, and nearly dismantled one of the world’s largest and most elusive criminal empires, and he wasn’t anywhere near the level occupied by Katerina Rostova. If you’re looking for her? If she’s still alive and one of your little task force’s targets? There isn’t enough good luck in existence for me to wish on for you.”

Ressler sighed. “I’m fairly sure she’s dead.” He opened the file. “That’s Reddington,” he said, pulling out a photo. “Do you know what their connection is? You don’t have to tell me,” he added when he saw her expression tighten, “but I’m going to find out one way or another. Some ways are simply messier and full of paperwork and Senate hearings.” That made her wince.

“I don’t, not really,” she supplied. “From what little I’ve gathered, he was the agent assigned to bring her over.”

“Katerina Rostova, the premier operative of the USSR, was going to defect?”

“Did defect,” she corrected. “Rumor has it that she had a child, and she thought the kid would do better in the US. None of our records name the father, but there was speculation that it was a highly placed Intelligence operative, either American or British. Whoever it was, they were likely Raymond Reddington’s superior, because he was pulled from another case and sent to Russia as part of black ops force. The signature on the order is redacted, even at my level.” She shook her head. “There were a lot of things that happened in the Eighties that the Service isn’t proud of, Agent Ressler.”

“Why Reddington?”

Goodson reached over and turned the heat down a notch. Thankfully. Ressler could feel his shirt sticking to his back beneath his winter coat, but hadn’t said anything to give it away. Letting Kat Goodson see him sweat was not on the list of things he wanted to accomplish today. “Reddington was the best at turning assets; that was his specialty. He was a real silver-tongued devil by all accounts. He had brought over a number of high-value targets, mostly out of East Berlin. He was known to be loyal to those he brought over, and his survival rate was astonishingly high. There were several cases where he disobeyed direct orders to burn his assets and walk. That was the thing, you see - Reddington never walked, and he refused to burn assets, even when the situation was critical. He always managed to find some other way. I believe it led to his capture on a few occasions, which gave the Service apoplexy, but it's said he was a hard nut to crack even for the most experienced operatives."

“I’m going to need all those old case files,” Ressler said, knowing it was a shot in the dark. “You should have turned those over to the task force assigned to hunt Reddington down almost seven years ago.”

Kat Goodson’s small laugh affirmed his opinion that he would have to get those files through other means. “I’ve told you all I have to tell, Agent Ressler. There are no casefiles. No records, no paper trails. Not anymore.”

Son of a… “The Factory,” he said.

“Whatever Braxton’s men did inside our system wiped a number of files. Reddington’s, mostly, as far as we can tell through the different aliases he used.” She shrugged. “There were a lot of them, and this is an era that predates digital record. A lot of the hard files at Langley were destroyed right around the time he disappeared in 1990. Braxton got to whatever was left.”

“How convenient.”

“You were there, Agent Ressler. We didn’t have any agents on the inside covering our tracks.”

“No,” he agreed. “You just tried to wipe them off the face of the planet with a couple well-aimed missiles.”

He didn’t miss the flicker of guilt and distaste that passed over her face. “One thing we’re not going to do is start throwing blame around, Donald. Those knives are double-edged, and cut deep. Ask Harold Cooper.”

“Cooper was trying to save his agent’s life, _Katherine_. If I were in your shoes right now, with all these hearings and this press about shadow governments? I’d start paying more attention to my men than to my superiors.” He looked at her. “You can’t buy loyalty or gratitude. And thanks for this, by the way. Best of luck to your kid in the next meet.”

He turned up his collar and stepped out of the big green SUV, welcoming this last little blast of winter before the thaw started. Audrey had hated winter, though he’d always preferred it. Maybe it was the Midwesterner in him; the Missouri boy that used to love the stretch between Halloween and Christmas more than anything else in the world. Losing Audrey the first time had strained his relationship with his family, and he just couldn’t get home much.

He didn’t really have much to show for it, even if he did.

Now, winter was just winter to him, but he still liked it more than summer. Probably came from the curse of being a redhead. His skin turned bright red if he so much as thought too hard about direct sunlight.

Once behind the wheel of his own vehicle, he sat in thought for a minute. What was his next step? He, frankly, wanted to march into Langley and set Aram to work combing through the database for every single mention of Raymond Reddington, but that wasn’t going to happen. Even if he got an order for it, more than half of what he’d get back would be redacted.

...oh, but there was a way around that, now, wasn’t there?

He picked up his phone and punched in Aram’s number. “Hey, I have a puzzle for you.”

******************

“Lizzy, just don’t drink coffee.”

“I like coffee.” She had started a second pot, as Ellery had taken most of the first out in a travel mug with her on the tractor. Liz had offered to help with...with whatever one helped with on a farm, but Ellery had scowled and made shooing motions. Liz had gone back inside to the kitchen to find Red hunting through the cupboards for the coffee grounds.

“You like syrup. That’s soda in that mug, just without the fun fizzy part.” He took a sip of his own black coffee for emphasis and arched an eyebrow.

She added another teaspoon of sugar for effect and counted his wince as a victory. It was the small things. Which, really, were the only things going for her at this point, but she’d take them. He must have noticed the falter in her thoughts because his head tilted to the side and regarded her steadily. “Am I am open book?” she asked suddenly. She blew across the surface of her coffee when he didn’t answer. “Tom said once that he knew all my tells, that I was an open book. Am I? Or was that just because of what he is?”

Something flickered quickly across his expression as he looked away. Guilt, she thought, by the tense set of his shoulders. He had a way of squaring them and pursing his lips before saying something he found unsavory or troubling. She wondered if she was in for another metaphor or story instead of a direct answer.

“Sometimes,” he said finally, and he turned back to meet her gaze squarely. “You’re not an open book, not all the time. But when you trust someone, Lizzy, the real you shines through whatever façade you’re showing the world. That’s not to say you aren’t good at lying; I’ve put you in many dangerous situations and you’ve always played the part and never let me down.” His lip twitched into a small, brief smile. “But you want to trust someone, you want to reach out for someone to hold onto. It’s a scary world out there, and you want to believe that there’s someone out there who will always love you, not because they have to, but because they chose to. It’s your weakness.”

For once, she wish he’d give a simple, succinct answer and not one that left her feeling emotionally naked. Half of her wanted to cheerfully chuck the coffee mug at his head, but with a new clarity born out of that memory of pulling each other out of the fire, she looked right back at him. That was his trick, wasn’t it? Emotional vulnerability. Reddington could expertly wield a person’s weakness against them in order to avoid a larger confrontation or to provide a covering distraction.

 _Why_ was he pointing this out, when all she wanted to know was how easy it was to tell if she was lying? Tom, maybe. Odds were he knew about the night she spent on the boat, but if he was worried about her trusting Tom, he shouldn’t be. She had turned to Red, not Tom...and that’s what this was about. Just like that conversation in the back of the car after she’d stopped that trumped up warlord from putting a bullet in Reddington’s head.

He had told her to leave, but she had come back for him, and she had been honest about why: it wasn’t that he was her asset, though he was, and protecting him was the whole reason she had even been at that stupid auction. It was the thought of leaving him there, alone in that cage, with no one to help him, no one he could rely on...it had torn at her until she knew she couldn’t take one more step without turning back to help him.

The thought that she might genuinely care about him enough to act on those feelings in his defense was terrifying to Reddington. He’d already shown that his defenses could be breached when it came to her, but it was the idea that _she_ could be reached through _him_ that he couldn’t tolerate. And that was his weakness.

“I’m not going to apologize for it,” she answered him steadily. “People need each other. If that’s my weakness, Red, I’m happy to own it.”

“I wondered why,” he continued, as though she hadn’t spoken. “For the longest time, I wondered. You had done so well, and then suddenly this punk kid shows up in your life and you start grifting. You terrified Sam so badly that he actually taught you his profession to keep you out of jail, but it was never about the stealing, was it, Lizzy? It was about Frank. What did he make you feel that no one else in your life had given you? Leaving aside the raging hormones of youth, why did you feel so insecure that you sought affection with a drug-addled, commitment-phobic, incompetent con-man?”

She froze, furious for a moment until she realized that this was a counter-strike on his part. Infuriate her and he might not have to deal with the more uncomfortable conversation about where things stood between them now. Jackass. Fine, two could play that game.

“I found out about the money, Red, so I guess you could say that was your fault, too.” She set the mug aside and hopped up onto the edge of the kitchen table, placing herself in a position where he’d have to lean back and look up at her to carry on this conversation. “I guess you could say you have a talent for bringing untrustworthy men into my life.”

She had been heartbroken and furious as a teen, once she figured out that someone, somewhere was paying Sam to take care of her. He was always terrible about paying bills on time, but somehow there was always money to do it. Somehow they had always skated by. In typical late teen Liz fashion, she had been more furious over the feeling of having been lied to about Sam’s affection over the years than she was about the secret of where the money came from. Her own father had been paid to love her!

Which, of course, had been idiotic and untrue - yes, there was money, but Sam’s affection had always been genuine. It had taken her a few years down a terrifying path that showed her the very worst of herself, but she had realized it finally. Realized that she was worth loving.

Red had flinched at her words, regret for bringing up the past etched into his expression. He looked for a moment like he might get up and leave, but Liz reached out a hand and placed it on his shoulder. “That’s what you want to believe, isn’t it? You’re always ready to shoulder the blame,” she said. “I’m sure Sam told you about it, in whatever way you communicated. But it wasn’t that, I don’t think. I mean, at the time it was. But would it have affected me so badly, shaken me so hard that I ran off to find affection wherever I thought I could find it, if I had…” She shook her head. “If I hadn’t felt some sort of guilt held over from those hidden memories? Some sense that I wasn’t good enough? That if I was better, they wouldn’t fight, that we’d have a home, that…that my father would love me and stop being so angry...that he...”

Red had leaned forward and pulled her towards him, and she rested her cheek against the top of his head where it rested on her shoulder and chest. His arms around her waist felt comfortable and warm, even through the thick robe and pajamas she wore. “Do you know what the porcupine’s dilemma is, Red?” she asked, after a long minute.

Her arms circled his shoulders, and she felt him breathe in and sigh. “Schopenhauer, Lizzy?” he asked, and the tone of his voice told her that he knew precisely what she was saying. The porcupine’s dilemma: a group of porcupines needing to huddle for warmth on a winter’s day, and yet they can never get close enough to truly share each other’s warmth...they only prick each other over and over again. It was the dilemma faced by those who crave love and affection but fear intimacy. The more they pulled someone close, the more they hurt them.

She had never met anyone as prickly as Raymond Reddington. “Mmhmm. Schopenhauer.”

“I am familiar.”

“I thought you might be.” She touched his cheek. “In a more literal sense, Red, you need a shave. Or are you growing a fugitive beard?”

He gave her one of those deep, throaty laughs and she pulled back. “Touché, Lizzy,” he commented as he stood to leave. She had gotten the upper hand in their little verbal war and then allowed him a graceful retreat. He would be too amused by it to notice for a while that not only had he lost that little skirmish, but that she had managed to once again slip inside of his physical barriers.

Liz slid off the table as he left the kitchen. She had only thought about it once or twice, but she had noticed in the past that it was rare for Reddington to initiate physical contact with her. The only times she could remember him doing so outright were the times she turned to him in pain, physical or emotional. It was almost as though he couldn’t help himself. Otherwise he would simply make himself available and then leave the decision to her.

Respect was part of it, though it was more than that. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, or trust himself; Reddington was a man who was tightly in control of his life, including every part of himself. You didn’t get to be as good at withstanding interrogation as Reddington was if you didn’t have a masterful mental control of your physical self. No, she thought, it wasn’t that he was frightened by what he might do, but rather by what he might feel: need. To need someone was painful and bewildering, especially if you never saw any possibility of that need being fulfilled, for whatever reason.

It hadn’t mattered as much to her before, not when there were so many answers she had needed from him. The puzzle of who he was as a man was firmly on the back burner. But now he was all she had, and the man he was had suddenly become the most important thing for her to understand.

Her coffee was cold. She sighed at it and then dumped the remnants in the sink. As delightful a mental puzzle as Raymond Reddington was, this was hardly the time for it. They needed to figure out their next step. She’d tidy up while Red used the shower, and then once they had both washed off the remnants of their flight from the law, she’d sit him down and together they would figure out a plan. Liz was damned if she was going to be left out of the conversation.

***************************

“Nothing,” Samar said. “I came up completely empty. Which is, in itself, telling.”

Aram tilted his head to one side, considering. “Even in the late Eighties, files were being moved to digital. There should be some kind of trail for someone who was considered to be the top KGB operative in existence.”

Samar raised an eyebrow. “Unless someone systematically destroyed it.”

“Before the OREA bombing, one of the agents mentioned that Katerina Rostova might not be real; that she might be the amalgam of a number of female KGB agents. The Russian bogeyman.” Ressler coughed. “Er, bogeywoman.”

“She’s real,” Dr. Ferris countered, staring at the photograph. “I’ve heard other bogeyman stories about operatives in my time overseas, and I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that they were all true.” She crossed her arms. “There’s an anonymity in extreme violence; a freedom. No one wants to believe one human being to be capable of so much terror because no one wants to see that darkness in themselves. The more capable you are of such measures, the more divorced you become from human society. Everyone and everything is reduced to a problem, lines of code on a page. It’s a mental state that’s achieved only by the most successfully elite covert operatives.”

“Like Reddington,” Ressler commented.

Ferris shook her head. “If Goodson’s intel is any good, then no. No, Reddington’s a different beast altogether from an operative like Katerina Rostova. For Rostova, having a child - and let’s assume for the moment that it’s even true about Rostova and Elizabeth Keen - might have impeded her ability to do her job. Having a child is a profound experience for most people who are capable of empathetic connection, and it changes how a person views life and death, how they process it.”

“It makes sense,” Aram offered. “Having brought a life into the world, I can imagine it might make it harder to take one. That’s what Meera used to say, at any rate,” he added when Samar cocked her head at him.

“She can’t do her job, she’s of no use to the Soviets. This is the mid-Eighties, the Soviets are on edge because of Ronald Reagan’s hard policies and sanctions, his ‘evil empire’ war drum beating. This is the very apex of the Cold War, when paranoia runs the highest on both sides. If anyone so much as farts and it wafts towards the west, they’re executed, wiped from existence, and the KGB grabs a new body.” Ferris looked over at the map she had hung, an old pull-down map rescued from a school that was slated for demolition. She had started sticking pins in portions of the old Soviet Union. “Things are bad. You’re a pregnant Soviet agent who has suddenly developed a deep doubt as to the very fundamentals of your life. Where do you go, and who do you get to help you?”

The room was quiet until Aram spoke softly, “Alan Fitch.”

Ressler nodded in agreement. “The Decembrist. That’s the codename he went by back when he was working covert ops in Russia.”

Ferris reached over for a folder. “That’s from the case with Milos Kirkoff, the agent known as ‘Berlin’? He killed Alan Fitch, it says.”

“Strapped a bomb to his neck,” Ressler supplied. “It was...well, there’s not really anything I can say about it that you can’t already imagine.”

A muscle in her jaw twitched. “I bet,” she said finally. “At any rate, we have no real idea what Fitch’s role in Russia was, but we can assume from the codename that it concerned creating instability within the Soviet Union. ‘The Decembrist’ can refer to any number of uprisings - 1825, the Revolution...it’s probably a safe bet to say Fitch thought perestroika was an opportunity for a new revolution.”

“That’s gone well for them,” Samar commented.

Ferris smiled. “‘Every revolution carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.’”

“Chomsky?” Ressler asked.

“Frank Herbert. _Dune_. Love that book.” Dr. Ferris hopped onto a nearby stool. “So let’s work this through. Right now we have pregnant KGB agent, or KGB agent with a baby. We also have a man who we can confirm already moved out one high value target, and essentially made her disappear to Russian eyes. We can assume he did this to manipulate Kirchoff within prison, to make him unstable. It doesn’t work, Kirchoff is a tougher nut than bargained for. So Fitch...what? Blames Reddington. Why?”

“Fitch was highly placed in the Intelligence community back then,” Ressler supplied. “He only went up from where he was. And if this was 1991, Reddington had already disappeared. Maybe Fitch caught wind of whatever secrets Reddington stole and hoped to create enemies to flush him out?” He shook his head. “That’s a hell of a long con, and one that might never pay out. There was no guarantee Kirchoff would ever survive the gulag, let alone set about creating a monstrous criminal empire to rival Reddington’s. At that point, there was no knowing what Reddington would do, himself.”

“You’re thinking linearly,” she commented. “Like a cop. You need to think like a spy. Agent Navabi?”

“The question isn’t ‘why’, Agent Ressler, it’s ‘why not’?” Samar wandered over to Reddington’s old Russian passports. “Pretend you’re Fitch. You’ve pulled off a big operation, but there could be fall out. There are some very dangerous agents now behind bars or shaken by the Kursk bombing, and those agents would have no problem coming after you and your family. Fitch had a wife and kids. He also had a problem agent that had disappeared, and possibly turned traitor. Why not shift the blame over to that former agent? It takes the heat off him, it possibly complicates that agent’s life, and there’s a chance that this dangerous man might someday do his dirty work for him. It’s the best move.”

Samar picked up one of the passports. “But if you’re asking me why Reddington in particular, I think that has to do with Katerina Rostova.” She placed her finger on a date and the word Leningrad, and then walked over to where Ressler had pinned up the scant information he’d gotten out of Kat Goodson. She pointed to one of the passports believed to belong to an alias of Rostova’s. Leningrad, same date.

Ressler approached and was shaken for a moment by the clean-cut, blonde-haired man in the tiny photograph that stared back at him. It was different now, having seen Reddington in person, talked to him, taken the man’s blood, for crying out loud. There was a weird connection he felt that hadn’t been there before, back when he was lead agent on the case. He remembered standing in the snow, barely restraining his fury and pain, and Reddington telling him that he was once just like him.

Urging him not to go down the same path.

Reddington looked so damn young in this photograph. His face leaner, his hair fuller, his expression less enigmatic. It was still passive and blank, the secret agent’s standard passport photograph. Ressler looked at the date, 1983. Christ, Reddington was just a twenty-three year old kid. What little Ressler remembered of 1983 involved ewoks and velcro straps on his shoes.

What had brought this man, with his good looks and fresh face, into the dark world of counter-intelligence? The same thing, maybe, that had driven Ressler to the Bureau; the need to do something righteous and good. What had happened with Katerina Rostova, and what role had Alan Fitch played in it?

“So now,” he said quietly to Dr. Ferris, “I have two sets of old covert files I need to get my hands on somehow.”

“You’re a clever boy, Donald,” she replied with a wide smile. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

*********************

The bath and shave had done a world of good to Red. Bless Ellery for her vast collection of epsom salts and herbal soaps. The soreness in his lower back from the endless truck rides had abated, and the stitches on his chest were less red and angry. They were the dissolving kind, so at least he didn’t have to worry about eventually pulling them out. That was, possibly, his least favorite medical task he had ever had to perform on himself, and that had just been on his leg.

He heard her footsteps, but resisted his instinct to duck and hide. She remembered the fire now, remembered his near miss with the flames. If they were to stick together, at some point she would likely see the scars. If she had to tend a wound or they had to change quickly or...well, other reasons he had no business thinking about. Ray would rather have her faint now than later, so he stayed put in front of the small bathroom mirror, shaving as instructed. He was thankful, at least, that he’d gone ahead and put his pants back on, though he had left his shirt off to tend to his chest.

Ellery’s small bathroom had filled with steam, and the small window hadn’t helped much, so he’d opened the door once decently covered. He hadn’t expected her back upstairs so quickly, though. Her natural curiosity should have taken her around the farmhouse and land a little. Yet he could feel her eyes in the mirror as he rinsed the razor blade under the faucet. “Yes, Lizzy?”

When he looked up, finally, and met her gaze in the mirror, she didn’t look as shocked as he would have thought. But then she did have access to the medical files from his myriad bookings into custody. She had never asked him about the scars, though, not even after she remembered that he had been there the night of the fire.

“I knew,” she said softly, leaning against the doorframe. “I just never really connected the dots. I didn’t pay that much attention to the physical notes in your file, beyond just a cursory glance.”

Red wiped the remnants of shaving cream off his face with the towel. Ellery hated powdery feminine scents, and stuck to a basic can of good old-fashioned shaving cream. He paused, wondering briefly what Ellery shaved, as he was fairly certain she didn’t shave her legs. That, perhaps, was not a line of thought he wanted to engage in. “It could have been a lot worse,” he said, though there had been many times, especially in the dark days following the fire, that he had wished she had simply run away and left him to burn.

He turned around to get his shirt, facing her. That was when her eyes widened, and he realized that he needed to replace the bandage Ellery had put on his chest. “Red.” Her voice was hoarse, and tears were torturing the corners of her eyes. Hadn’t they had enough tears for one day? “Here,” she said thickly, walking over to him as he started to pull a bandage out of the medicine cabinet, “let me help.”

“Lizzy, I’m fine.”

“You pulled out some stitches.” She reached for the rubbing alcohol and he pointed towards where Ellery kept the cotton balls.

He looked down at her, and she put a hand on his bare shoulder, pushing him back to the wooden stool on which Ellery had kept the spare towels. “I have been thoroughly chastised, I assure you.”

She gave him a look and he stopped arguing. Maybe she just needed to help. He remembered the makeshift operating room, the taste of blood in his mouth, reaching out for her in desperation and fear. He had made arrangements with Kate, but the thought of dying and leaving Elizabeth behind on her own was more terrifying than he had anticipated. For so long, he had faced his own mortality with sanguine acceptance, but for the first time in so many years, there was someone he was afraid to leave.

Even back then, though, if he were honest...there was always a part of him that thought Brenda and Charlotte would be better off without him. That they needed a husband and father who could help with dinner and pick up from ballet rehearsals, who would go trick-or-treating, stay at home so Brenda could start her own dance studio. Someone who would buy that damn horse farm.

Sometimes, when the pain had been too much, too sharp, that was what he liked to imagine happened. That they had lived, that the amount of blood he found in the house wasn’t fatal, that somehow they had run and found a better life far away from him.

Liz’s hands were swift and gentle, and the bandage was taped on in no time. She snorted softly as her fingers brushed the hair on his chest. “That had to hurt when you pulled it off.”

“It was unpleasant, yes.” He took her fingers and pressed a quick kiss to the back of them before looking up at her. “Thank you,” he said, sincerely.

She nodded and turned away to retrieve his shirt and a clean undershirt that he had left on top of the wicker hamper. Ellery and her wicker. Wicker everything. It smelled like an alpine forest in this place, all pine and birch bark. “You’re welcome.” She stood in front of him with the shirt in her hands and gestured to his back. “Do you want...is there anything you put on that, or…?”

Red took the undershirt from her and pulled it over his head. “No, not usually. Though there is this fabulous yet strange little masseuse in Rio. She has hands like–”

Liz cut him off by tossing the shirt at his head. “No!” she laughed. “No strange little women with hands like whatever they’re like. Get out, let me wash up and then we’ll talk.”

He smiled as he buttoned the flannel he’d pulled out of Ellery’s spare closet. “Fair enough, Lizzy.” He stood up and cupped her face between his hands before he really even registered his movements. She looked at him and he sighed. Lord, she was beautiful, even disheveled and red-eyed from a morning full of emotional upheaval.

For a moment, the urge to pull her close and kiss away that burden was a temptation that was nearly overwhelming. He had thought about kissing her in moments of idle amusement, mostly entertained by the thought of her outraged reaction, because he did so love pressing her buttons, so to speak. She was a challenging woman, full of fire and energy, and he was helpless moth to that flame.

But this was...they were so close, and her chin had tilted up as though she sensed his inner struggle, her lips slightly parted. The depth of need that expression woke in him was terrifying; she couldn’t possibly give back what he wanted, what he needed from her. Only two days ago they had been shouting at each other, she had turned away from him and turned back to the illusion of her old life, and then had shattered that with a bullet she never meant to fire. She was lost on this ocean of chaos, clinging to whatever raft she could strap together, and while he would always, always keep her head above water, he couldn’t…

...he needed too much, damn it, and he couldn’t open that door. It would leave him standing there in the cold, waiting for her to come in when she never would.

So instead he leaned his forehead against hers and brushed his thumbs against her cheeks. “Whatever comes next, Lizzy,” he told her, “we will face it together. I won’t leave you. I will see you through this darkness, I promise you.”

She nodded, and he kissed her forehead. It was enough. It would have to be enough.

*******

TBC


	6. Hannah Ferris

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I hope you like monologues. Because, boy, do I have some monologues for you.
> 
> 2\. Walter Gary Martin is that agent that tried to replace Cooper. The one Red punched in the face in his escape during "Berlin Part Two". The guy with the nose.
> 
> 3\. Aram is so much fun to write. 
> 
> 4\. No, really, I hope you like monologues.
> 
> 5\. Special thanks to figure_of_dismay for the beta!

“Um, Agent Ressler?”

“Yes, Aram?”

“Why are we meeting in the maintenance closet?” He elbowed a bottle of windex out of the way of his long arms, and Ressler smiled as reassuringly as he could manage.

“There are no mics in the maintenance closets,” he replied, keeping his voice low. “Right now, Aram Mojtabai, you’re the one and only person in this entire facility that I completely trust.”

Aram blinked. “Oh, uh. Thank you. I think. What about Agent Navabi?”

“I like Samar, I do, but she has her own agenda. So does Dr. Ferris, and that’s why I need you,” he paused, “That is, if you trust me.”

Aram hesitated. “Tell me one thing, Donald.”

Ressler blinked. He could count on one hand the number of times Aram had used his first name. “What do you want to know?”

“When Liz broke out of this facility, when the cameras came back up, you were standing by the auxiliary exit. You had a cell phone in your hand and you said we had just missed her.” Aram pursed his lips. “Did you let her go?”

For a long minute, Ressler considered lying. What if he was wrong about Aram’s loyalties? No, he thought, he couldn’t go down that path. If he couldn’t trust anyone, then he couldn’t do this at all. Whatever _this_ was, these days.

“Yes.”

He could have said more. Explained that he had seen the horror on her face when the senator started convulsing next to her, that he had thought she deserved a chance. That he wasn’t willing to cross the line between them and become her enemy. He could have added that he had no idea she and Cooper would go after Connolly. What difference did that really make, though? He had still let her go.

“Do you regret it?”

“That’s two things, Aram,” he countered, but he was met only with a steady look. “No, I don’t regret it, especially not after talking to Cooper. I don’t want to find Liz just to lock her up in some cage. I want to find out what happened and why. I want to know if there’s anything left of the Elizabeth Keen we know. And, if there is, I want to know how we protect her.”

Aram nodded. “Okay. I’m in. What do you need?”

“Hannah Ferris. I want to know who she is.” He shrugged. “Maybe she is what she says, but she knows an awful lot about Reddington. And suddenly Samar goes from having her claws out to being besties with Ferris? There’s something going on there. We need to know what.”

“The last time I cracked Samar Navabi’s personnel file, she put me in a headlock,” Aram countered.

“I’m not suggesting you do it through official channels. That’s why we’re meeting in a broom closet.”

Aram frowned. “If not official channels, then…wait. What? You can’t be serious. Because if you were serious, I wouldn’t be going through Reddington’s people to get Dr. Ferris. I’d be getting Liz.”

Ressler shook his head. “Reddington’s a tactician. He’ll keep Liz close and protected, and you and I both know there’s no getting to her without getting through him.”

Aram didn’t look any more at ease. “I don’t understand, Agent Ressler. What exactly are we doing here?”

“Officially? We’re looking for two fugitives, Agent Mojtabai. Unofficially, I’m not entirely sure. What I do know is that I’m tired of being fed a quarter of the real story. I want intel, and if it comes from Reddington, it just might be trustworthy…which is a sentence I frankly never thought I’d say.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “At any rate, see if you can make any contacts. I can write it off as an undercover sting to try and bring in some of his known associates, who will of course be very crafty and good at evading capture.”

“I have never gone undercover and have absolutely no training in that regard.”

Ressler smiled, genuinely. “Yes, I know. That’s what makes you perfect.”

Aram rocked back on his heels. “Double bluff?”

“Now you’re speaking my language.” Ressler clapped Aram on the shoulder and grinned.

*****************************

“Well,” Ellery said with a huff, heaving the cardboard box onto the worn kitchen table, “Here you go. This was at the post office with my shipment of feed. Told them it was parts for my little hobby.” She pointed to the small room Liz had wandered through earlier that was filled with model airplanes.

“Perfect,” Red said, clapping his hands together and searching for a pair of scissors. “Right on time!”

Liz put down her glass of water and stared. “Amazon?”

“Hmm? What about it?” He finally found a pair of scissors in the drawer by the refrigerator and held them up, grinning.

“You…I don’t understand, you ordered something from Amazon?” She tilted her head. “When? Also, you have an Amazon account?”

He simply cocked his head back and gave her that look that said he was impatiently waiting for her to catch up. Realization dawned on her, along with the sheer magnitude and brilliance of his scheme. It was stunningly simple and perfect. “Oh. You…you magnificent bastard!” she exclaimed with begrudging admiration.

Reddington laughed delightedly and cut into the tape on the box.

“How much did it cost you? You were one of the first investors, weren’t you? For all your luddite act, you knew it would be a big thing, and you saw the opportunity. Warehouses, trucking routes, airfields, cargo ships… billions of those little cardboard boxes zooming around the country with almost no harassment daily.”

He set the scissors down and leaned on the table, watching her piece it together with a pleased expression on his face.

There had been other times like this, and she had resisted it: that spark between them, the unspoken understanding of two clever minds, the feeling of a natural partnership. But now there was no job to protect, no illusory normal life. She had tried, damn it. She had tried to be what Sam wanted her to be. The picket fence, the dog, the absence of a criminal record. For ten years, she had tried.

What had terrified and disturbed her for so long about this feeling with Reddington was the weight of its reality. It was the most solidly real thing she had ever felt, even more than her marriage, more than her excitement over having a child, getting the job she wanted. How could something so terribly wrong feel so much more real than the perfect life she was supposed to want?

Because it was, as it turned out.

“You,” she said, sitting down at the head of the table, “Are a diabolical genius, Raymond Reddington. So tell me. What’s in the box?”

He pulled out the items one by one. A flip phone, a packet of salted peanuts that were stamped with the Virgin airlines logo, a DVD copy of _An American in Paris_ , and a small key. Liz looked at them all in turn, and then looked at Red, who was patiently waiting.

She held up the DVD. “I like _Singin’ in the Rain_ better.”

“Heretic,” he scoffed. “Poor Debbie Reynolds; Kelly worked her into the ground on that film. It’s amazing she did any others after enduring his totalitarian barbarism.”

“A fondness for old musicals isn’t really the message here, is it?”

He shrugged and sat down, taking the seat to her left so that they were facing each other but still close. “You don’t want a nice night in, Lizzy? Ellery has a deceptively excellent wine cellar. Of course, she makes half of it herself.”

She smiled and laughed, which she was fairly certain was his objective. There was a wistful note to his voice, and she was surprised to find that a part of her responded to that ideal evening with desire. “Where do the airline peanuts fit in? Because if you’re trying to woo me to your side of the team, Red, I have to tell you that I–”

“–do not make that joke, Lizzy, I am begging you–”

“–don’t work for peanuts,” she finished, raising her voice over his objections to her sense of humor. He threw the packet at her and she caught it, laughing when he crossed his arms and huffed. “So tell me, who is this a message from and what does it mean?”

“It’s from Leonard Caul,” he said, “Well, from Leonard through Dembe. When Dembe and I parted, I sent him to see to it that Leonard made it out of DC safely. Leonard’s task was to locate an old MI6 asset that had allegedly been burned back in ‘88. He might have some answers I need that relate to the Director and the specifics of their plan. Looks like Leonard’s found him in Paris.”

“And the peanuts?”

He looked at the packet fondly.  “Dembe’s way of telling me he’s all right.”

Liz folded her hands in front of her. “Ressler said one time that he saw the brand of the Eberhardt Cartel on Dembe’s back.”

Red looked up at her and raised an eyebrow. “I sense a question.”

“Is Dembe why you went after Floriana Campo?” She watched the emotions flicker quickly over his face, trying to decipher them before they vanished behind his expertly crafted mask. “You led us to her through the Freelancer because you knew I wouldn’t hear anything bad about her. No one would believe you.”

“Partially,” he admitted. “That one was also about you.”

“False idols,” she guessed and he nodded. “A message that not everything I believed in was true. That I could be deceived by what I held most dear. But let’s not deflect this back at me. Dembe. You rescued him, too, didn’t you? That’s why he’s so loyal to you.”

“Dembe’s loyal because Dembe’s a good man. I did what anyone would do, Lizzy, who had the ability, power, and money to do so.” He shook his head. “But don’t be fooled by any actions you want to miscatergorize as brave or noble. He’s ten times the man I will ever be.”

“The peanuts?”

Red looked down at them, touched the edge of the packet with an extended finger. “He was the quietest teen you’d ever meet. He knew that noise would get him in trouble, that he was better off invisible, and so he didn’t talk much. I didn’t press him, and to be honest I’ve never really wanted to know the detailed depth of what he’s been through. I have seen enough of human depravity over the years to be able to make a fairly educated guess, and that alone is enough to haunt my nightmares, to say nothing of his. He doesn’t care to discuss it much, at any rate. He’s been forced to give away so much of his private self already.”

Liz thought of the tall, silent man who seemed to radiate strength, and suppressed an inward shudder at the thought of what he might have had to endure. “How old was he when…?”

“Six.”

Suddenly the memory of Floriana Campo writhing on the floor of her hotel room was a lot less disturbing. Part of her was retroactively sorry that she made any effort to save the woman’s life at all.

“I would ask him just to give me some kind of sign that he was doing well, or not,” Red continued, “I kept tabs on him, just to make sure the cartel never got their claws in him again, make sure he got the help that he needed. I left it open for him. He didn’t have to speak to me if he didn’t want to. Sometimes he would. When things were bad for him, though, he would clam up, disappear. No one can disappear from plain sight as fluidly as Dembe can. But he would leave these little signs for me; items swiped from some place or another that would have meaning.” He chuckled as picked up the peanuts, “He wouldn’t get on an airplane for the longest time. Hated the idea of them. He had always moved around by truck or boat. Finally, I convinced him to get on a flight and, when I picked him up at the airport, he had stolen about four boxes of airline peanuts. I still have no idea how he got them into his carry-on. Since then, it’s been his sign that he’s managed to travel safely.”

“You care about him.” It was instinct to reach over and take his hand, and he opened his palm to hers.

“I would call him a true friend, but that would be an understatement. Friendships are a casual thing; they belong in backyard barbecues and weekend book clubs. As a culture, Americans have always been so hesitant to assign any higher value to human relationships beyond familial. Always afraid of seeming weak by acknowledging the importance of emotional attachments. It does not make me weak to say that Dembe Zuma is in the very small circle of people that I love and hold dear. He is a companion, a partner, and a brother to me. When we work together, we maintain this fiction of employer and bodyguard, but Dembe works where he wants to work. And that is almost always exclusively to promote what he views as the greater good.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m telling you this now, Lizzy, because I don’t want you to ever underestimate his value. If something ever happens to me…”

“Red, don’t.”

“Listen to me.” He sighed. “Please. There are arrangements in place.”

“I don’t want your money, Red. That’s not a replacement for you.” Liz placed her other hand on his wrist, their fingers still entwined. The thought of losing him now, after everything that had just happened, was like a yawning chasm opening at the base of her feet. It filled her with fear.

He covered that hand with his own free one. “It’s not just money. That’s already available to you, whenever you need it to smooth the way. It’s always been available, but the arrangements I’ve made will give you what you need to arm yourself and stay safe. I hope it never comes to that, believe me. I’m rather attached to my life, we’ve been companions this half century. But if it does, Lizzy, you have to know that you can trust Dembe implicitly. Listen to him, always. Let him guide you. And if he ever eats Mexican food, book a room in a different hotel, in a different city.”

It was a lighthearted jest meant to break the tension and Liz laughed softly. She didn’t let go of his hands, though, and lowered her head onto the table until she rested it on top of their joined fingers. “What’s the key?” she asked, not wanting to lift her head yet. She could smell the soap he had used from the back of his hand.

“A safety deposit box that will contain everything we need for international travel. Aliases, that sort of thing.” He brushed her forehead with his thumb. “Paperwork.”

“Raymond Reddington,” she said smiling, “the Secretary of Crime.”

He laughed, and it was that low, pleased laugh that she liked to hear. “What do you think a concierge does, Elizabeth?”

“Well, I don’t have any dry cleaning. Not anymore.” She sat up. “Shit. I really liked my clothes. And my books. And I had the whole series of Friends on DVD. It had been a graduation present from Sam - we always used to sit and watch it together.” Another realization hit her and she sighed. “That beautiful music box you restored for me. That’s just sitting in a cold evidence locker somewhere, with all these people trying to figure out what it means to me, and they have no idea. How can they?”

His eyebrow twitched, but he said nothing. He kept hold of her hands, though.

“You know,” she continued, “I didn’t feel anything but relief when I put it all in storage. I even had this big curbside sale to get rid of stuff after I closed up the house. It felt good, like I was shedding off my old life, getting rid of the lies and everything they had tainted. Those pieces I wanted to hold to safely tucked away in storage, and I wouldn’t have to worry about them. It’s all gone now, and I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s okay, but at the same time it isn’t.”

“It never will be,” he said softly, “Not fully. Those of us who are capable of empathetic connection to other human beings often develop those same connections to objects that are reminiscent of the people or places we loved. It’s difficult to let those things go, because we fear we’ll forget. We’ll change beyond recognition and no longer feel the same way towards those we love, or maybe they’ll forget us. They’ll move on, and no one will ever know how important that connection once was, because there’s nothing left to prove it. We define ourselves by the people we love, Lizzy. If we lose all tangible parts of that, we lose ourselves. And that’s the hardest thing to bear.”

She looked at him for a long moment, studied the circles under his eyes, the strong line of his chin, the tilt in his head as he steadily returned her regard. “You keep tabs on the people you save, the people you care about. You told me once that it was an empty gesture, that it was about assuaging your guilt, but that’s not it, not really. You need to know that in all the darkness and filth you have to wade through to survive, somewhere in the world there is even a tiny measure of good that you’ve managed to accomplish.”

He swallowed thickly and looked away. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “Lizzy...don’t. Don’t make me into a hero. I’m not one.”

“No,” she acknowledged, “You’re not a hero, Red, but you’re not a monster, either. It’s not that black and white, no matter how much simpler it is to draw lines. You were right about that. Lines disappear, even those you draw inside yourself. You’re capable of being the hero every bit as much as the monster, and sometimes you’re even both at once. Sometimes you’re a downright bastard, and other times you’re just a man. I don’t agree with some of the things you’ve done, and there are some…there are some I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for doing. But, Red? Raymond? I trust you. I trust you and I care about you, and that’s all that matters right now.”

He didn’t answer, not verbally. It was a difficult statement, and maybe not one he was equal to putting into words, not yet. It was hard for him to accept this...whatever this was between them. It was hard for her, too. This was a strange connection that defied conventional definition, and she found herself not wanting to put a label on it for fear that it would somehow change.

“So, Lizzy,” he said finally, “have you ever been to Paris?”

************************

“Walter, if I gave even half a shit about your opinion, you’d know,” Hannah said shortly as she finished assembling the firearm in front of her.

“I’m not a scared date on prom night,” he said, “Cleaning your guns isn’t intimidating.”

She began taking it back apart again. The assembly time had been slower than her usual standards. “I don’t bother with intimidation. Killing is faster. Now do us both a favor and spit out what you really came to say, and then get out. Unless you really want me to break your nose a third time.”

Martin sighed and shook his head. “I’m not sure why I even bothered.”

“You bothered because you don’t trust the Director any more than I do.” Click, click, snap. That was better. Except it wasn’t Fitch talking to her while she practiced, and she found she much preferred his voice. She missed it, that melodious, soothing quality.

She had wanted to put the bullet in Fitch’s head personally, but she wasn’t going to get tripped up by vengeance. Not now. Not when she was finally so close. Besides, Reddington had already taken care of Kirchoff. There wasn’t much meat left there for her, besides what remnants of Berlin’s organization Reddington’s people hadn’t gotten to.

And tracking down Berlin’s people was an entirely different situation, which was where Samar Navabi fit in quite nicely.

“I bothered,” he corrected, stepping closer, “Because we had something, once.”

Hannah laughed, hollowly. “No, we didn’t. Don’t kid yourself, Walter. You were never the only one.”

He regarded her steadily. “I know. I knew about you and Fitch, whatever fucked up business that was about.”

Click, click. Snap. Even faster. “The fucked up business was fucking, Walter.” She looked up at him and smiled. “He was good with his fingers. Tell me what you want to tell me.”

“You aren’t the only one the Director hired.”

“That’s not news, Walt.”

Where had she put that can of air? Ah.

“He found her, Hannah.” That made her pause. “He found Jennifer Reddington, and he plans to use her against her father. I know you have some kind of connection with the girl, that you and Fitch helped her disappear. I just…while you’re in there dicking around with what’s left of Cooper’s little task force, the Director is going after the real leads.”

She thought something like that might be the Director’s play. “I have my methods.”

“And your own agenda.”

“Of course,” she confirmed. Click, click. Snap. Best time yet. “We all do, Walter. That’s how this alliance works. A common goal to suit everyone’s self-interest, because that’s the only sustainable way. No one past the age of twenty really cares about ideology. We’re the very ideal expression of capitalism, oligarchy, and nihilism all rolled into one dark, little, patrician package. I don’t work for them; it’s simply that sometimes my interests align with theirs, and money happens to be involved.”

“What are your interests, Hannah?” Walter asked, pacing. “I’ve tried to figure that out for years.”

The clip was sticking. She applied a little more gun oil to it. “You can keep figuring.”

“I know about the drugs, obviously. You helped Cooper clean out the cartels that were funding Al Qaeda and set up your own operation in their place. A nice, clean organization that buffers the ordinary Afghani poppy farmer from the brutal world of drug transportation. Your little band of special ops boys, what do you call them? The Wolf Pack? I know about them, too. You brought all these wounded and suffering soldiers under your caring wing and gave them employment. How noble.”

“I’m a fucking angel, Walt. I’m pretty sure I remember you screaming that in ecstasy at one point. You were tied up, though, and I can’t remember - was that our safety phrase?”

He ignored her. “You employed them in your own cartel.”

She smiled. Click, click, snap. “And they are fiercely loyal, bless them. Unlike you.”

Walter turned around to question her, and the bullets caught him square between the eyes. Jacketed hollow-point. She double-tapped, always did, but it wasn’t necessary. She stood and walked over to the mess, sighing. “All over the rug, too. How vaguely reminiscent of our time together.” She shot him once more in the chest, this time for catharsis. “Dick.”

The burner cell had been in the pocket of her gray hooded jacket since Walter had stepped through the apartment door, the number prepped and ready to call. Two birds with one rather messy stone. She needed to vet a new cleaner anyway. “Hello,” she said, “I’d like to speak to Mr. Kaplan please.”

**************************

“Apologies for the delay, dearie. I had some unexpected work.”

Red ran a hand over his face. “I understand, Kate.”

He could hear her clear her throat with a delicate cough. “I won’t waste your time with banalities. I trust you know your business as well as you ever did.” So Ellery had been able to contact Kate to tell her that Red and Liz were safe. That was good. Kate was a bear when she fretted.

“Raymond, we have a situation.” Oh, hell, he knew that tone of voice. His stomach clenched and he awaited the bad tidings, whatever they might be. “Special Agent Walter Gary Martin of the DC Field Office is dead. The guy with the nose,” she added unnecessarily.

Red froze. “This was the first I’ve heard of it.” That should speak volumes to Kate.

“I know. That’s why I’m telling you now. You know I never violate client confidentiality unless it’s an emergency.”

Red frowned. He stood in front of the wide living room windows, watching dusk fall across the farmland. The full moonlight made the light dusting of snow sparkle. “Martin’s death is concerning, but I’m not sure it qualifies as a full-on emergency. I never liked him much, but he was Fitch’s man. I can’t say I’m surprised to see the alliance cleaning house.’

“They’re doing more than that,” her voice said in his ear. “Raymond, they’ve hired Persephone. She’s the one who killed Martin, and right now, she’s holded up inside that Post Office place with the remnants of your task force.”

Red inhaled sharply. Persephone. “I see.”

He knew the name, but he’d never had the misfortune to meet the operative behind it. She was known as a wetworks specialist particularly favored by Alan Fitch, but she was so much more than that. Persephone was a shadow, a ghost story - as close to a paranormal entity as the criminal underground possessed. Personally, Red had always thought that she was much like Katya; an excellent operative whose reputation snowballed into a collection of outrageous exploits, half of which she never committed.

That didn’t make Persephone any less dangerous -- quite the contrary. The name sent a tremor of fear through the underground ahead of her; finding associates who weren’t affected by it was difficult and expensive. “There are others, we think, that were hired to track you. Dembe is working on that end of things, but I thought you should know about this immediately.”

“Thank you,” he said, “Where are we on the other thing?”

“The timeline remains the same.”

Cooper’s transfer was still on track, then. The alliance would anticipate an attack during the transfer, which was precisely why Reddington had his people positioned into the five possible facilities they would transfer him to in the area. They already had the escape route in place for Charlene, and merely awaited the word to go.

“Excellent.”

Kate paused and in that silence, Red heard everything that she wanted to say but didn’t dare. Questions about Ellery, the farm, the giving of regards to both. There could be no hint of it voiced, for the safety of everyone involved. The farm was their heart; they would protect it with all their might, and together Kate Kaplan, Ellery Simpson, and Raymond Reddington wielded a formidable and terrible strength.

Then she hung up and Ray pocketed the phone. He could see Liz’s reflection in the window as she approached the small dining table, helping Ellery set out dinner. She had seemed to fit in here so well as a child, but now she seemed out of place. She was too tempestuous, too tightly wound for such a bucolic setting. It would be interesting to see her in Paris. How he would like to take her there some day, when danger wasn’t snapping at their heels. He could spend days watching Lizzy look at paintings in the Louvre, seeing the wind whip at her hair on the Tower, her pleasure in tasting the finest cuisine.

It was a dangerous line of thinking, leading to all the other beautiful corners of the world he could take her to. There was so much life out there; he wanted her to live it, but he wanted to live it with her, and that could never happen. Too much darkness surrounded him. He would block the light, and she would wither. There was simply too much between them; time, age, lies, and secrets.

And now this new danger, Persephone. Why the task force? Maybe she wanted him to panic, pull back all the associates the task force knew, create a flurry of activity that she could track. It’s what he would have done. It did suggest, however, that Elizabeth was her primary target. The task force under Agent Ressler would treat them both together as one objective. Find one, and you would likely land the other. Persephone would use the task force to absorb as much data about them as she could, and then would use that to predict their movements individually. He had no doubt she’d be successful; he had seen the aftermath of her operations.

Well, that was a game two could play. The trick was getting Ressler to listen, and Red was not at all confident in his ability to do so.

He felt the phone buzz, and picked it up, glancing at the number. Dembe, most likely. He frowned and flipped it open to answer, but said nothing. He wasn’t expecting to make contact with Dembe until Paris.

“Raymond,” came Dembe’s even tone. “I have someone here I think you should talk to.”

Red glanced over his shoulder, but Liz had gone into the kitchen. “Go on.”

He could hear some background noise -- shifting fabric, footsteps, whispers. “Mr. Reddington,” came the nervous and vastly unexpected voice of Agent Aram Mojtabai, “Please don’t hang up.”

********************

TBC


	7. Tom Keen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: There is discussion and analysis of abuse in this chapter. Mostly emotional. 
> 
> Thanks again to figure_of_dismay for the beta!

Liz could tell something was wrong by the rigid, sharp movements Red made as he snapped the phone closed and turned around. He gave her a smile, but it was that false smile -- the one that said _I’m not going to talk about this right now_. The questions were on the tip of her tongue, but she bit them back. Red would tell her or he wouldn’t, and attempting to yell or scream or cry the information out of him had never worked before. It certainly wasn’t going to work now that her safety was such a precarious issue.

He slowed his gait as he walked past her into the kitchen, ever so slightly as though he expected a confrontation. She said nothing, merely continued to set out the silverware, letting him pass. She could feel his eyes on the back of her neck and then he was gone.

It all came down to trust, in the end. Liz sighed and rubbed her eyes, feeling inexplicably exhausted, though it was relatively early in the evening. It had been an emotional day, however, and she still had difficulty believing it had only been one day since her life had altered so completely.

That wasn’t entirely true, though, was it? Part of her wanted to say that her life had changed completely the day she first laid eyes on Raymond Reddington handcuffed to a chair in a bulletproof box, except…that wasn’t true, either. Not really. She’d had a life, yes, but it had all been a lie.

She was Neo, and Red had come along like a pale Lawrence Fishburne and offered her the red or the blue pill. Like an idiot, she had tried to take both.

Apparently her mind could no longer cope with the reality of her situation and was processing her complex emotions through the filter of ‘90s pop culture. Liz sat down at the dinner table and wondered where Ellery kept the wine, because a little bit of oblivion would be highly welcome at this juncture, at least before she started humming Stone Temple Pilots. Maybe it was the flannel shirt she wore?

She shook herself, ordering her wayward thoughts under control. She was not, under any circumstances, going to lose her shit one day into her fugitive run. This was not her first rodeo as a criminal, she had simply never done anything this bad or been quite this hunted before. It was a big leap from petty thief and grifter to a criminal of Red’s caliber.

Would it help if she thought of herself as a vigilante? Operating outside the wall, technically a criminal, but doing work for the greater good?

No. Better to call a spade a spade. Besides, Red could have easily gone that route and didn’t, for a reason. She didn’t know what that reason was; she didn’t know what any of his reasons were, but she had to trust him.

And she was back to trust. Did she trust him? Her feelings were complex and layered, and it was difficult and painful to sift through them, but it did boil down to that one question. She cared about him, for reasons she couldn’t quite put a finger on, but she did. She trusted that he cared about her. There was ample evidence of that, despite her gnawing fear that once again she would discover that affection to be a lie. She trusted that he acted in her best interest, though it rankled to have little say in her destiny, and his presumption at times infuriated her.

The memory of the burning window and injured man floated back into her mind. She looked down at her scar and ran a finger over it. I’m going to drop you down and it might hurt, but you need to be brave, Lizzy. Be brave. She remembered his cries as the heat licked at his back, because he’d wrapped his jacket around her to keep her safe. He still bore those scars, his pain traded for her life.

_I believe I will always do whatever I have to do to keep you safe._

She trusted the man in the window, the man who still lay underneath all the criminal layers of Raymond Reddington–the heart that still relentlessly beat beneath burn scars and bullet wounds and God knew what else. That was what she would put her faith in. She would not blindly trust the criminal, or let his decisions always go unquestioned. He had hidden behind that façade so long now that it overtook him at times, consumed him. It was a dark and narrow path they would walk, but maybe if they were able to hold on to each other, neither of them would be lost over the edge.

“Here we go,” interrupted Ellery’s voice, which was followed by the mouth-watering smell of roast chicken. “This was Acorn. Great hen in her day, but then she started pecking at the others, so…” she shrugged and made the throat-cutting gesture. “Life on the farm.”

She looked past Ellery to where Red stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame as though waiting for an invitation. He held a bottle in one hand and balanced three jam-jar glasses expertly in the other. The only glasses in this house are the kind grape jelly comes in, Lizzy. You can give up looking for any others.

Liz cocked her head and smiled at him. “So is this the dandelion wine I heard about? I’ve never had it before.”

Red returned her smile, his echo of it full of softness and something she was a little afraid to name, but it made her breath catch ever so slightly. “‘ _Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in_ ,’” he said, his voice as rich and warm as the amber liquid he poured into the three glasses.

He handed one of the glasses to her. “The drink that inspired one of the most beautiful and poignantly nostalgic books in English literature. Bottoms up, Lizzy,” he added, clinking the edge of her glass with his.

Tomorrow and its problems would come in time. For now, she would drink this deliciously spiced yet powerful drink, eat this undoubtedly also delicious chicken, and listen. There would be stories tonight, she felt. This was a drink that did indeed invoke summers past. Liz found herself leaning forward in anticipation, a sudden thirst for scenes from his past making itself known in her heart. Not the dark times, the running and the violence, she wanted the slivers of joy, the moments he affirmed he was still alive and there were things to feel and see.

If he could find that, after all the darkness, then so could she.

*************************

“Well,” Ressler said, leaning on the railing of the narrow bridge, “isn’t that interesting.”

Aram fought to catch his breath and unzipped his parka. “I hate running.”

It wasn’t Ressler’s favorite activity since being shot in the leg, but he wouldn’t let that beat him. He had started to find the sharpness of the pain refreshing after so many months of numbness, physical and emotional. He had gone through the gym routines automatically, mechanically, determined to be medically cleared as soon as possible so he could get back to work after Audrey. Later on, he continued so he didn’t have think about Meera.

Jesus, he really was a mess, and Liz had tried to help, but she wasn’t any better. Physician heal thyself, he thought cynically. At least her problems had given him something to focus on that wasn’t himself.

That ended now. He was tired of being everyone’s pawn, which he would always continue to be as long as he shut himself off and followed orders.

“Persephone,” he mused. “Wasn’t she the girlfriend of Hades or something? I’m not exactly up on my Greek mythology.”

Aram nodded, turning around to rest his back against one railing and prop a leg up on the other. The morning was warmer than it had been, but the melting snow and mud had kept most runners and bikers out of Rock Creek Park that morning. Only the most routine and dedicated folks were out taking their exercise.

“Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, a type of earth goddess. Depending on the myth, she was either abducted by Hades or ran away with him willingly, but it upset Demeter so much that she withdrew from the world, plunging it into a Game of Thrones-style never-ending winter.” Aram stretched his arms out, nearly touching the toes that rested on the railing. “The version of the myth I know says that Persephone married Hades, or at least took over some of his duties and power. She was known as the Princess of the Underworld. Eventually Persephone, Hades, and Demeter worked out a deal where Persephone spent part of the time above ground and the rest below, leading to the development of the seasons.”

Ressler looked over at Aram and raised his eyebrows. “There’s all kinds of symbology there that I’m not even sure how to work out.”

Aram shook his head. “Right? And the profiler we have is the one under suspicion.” He paused. “You know…”

Ressler froze. Aram was right, but…

How did his life get to this point? He had gone from being one of the most respected field agents with a reputation for dogged adherence to the rules, who never put one foot over the line and had one of the highest conviction rates as a result, to someone who was contemplating betraying the entire organization he had dedicated his life to serving.

_I don’t know how you did it._

_Once you cross over, Agent Ressler…_

He thought of everything Cooper had told him, the look of fear in his face when he spoke of his wife, the whole situation with this fulcrum file and all the investigations now ongoing. For the first time, he had become acutely aware of the puppet strings attached to him, but he would have to tread very carefully if he wanted to cut them.

There was still a small part of him that didn’t want to. The part of him that wanted to pop another painkiller, dull the world around himself, and slip into the familiar blanket of routine and duty. Fortunately, the rest of him realized that from here on, there was only one way to go, and that was forward through the mire.

The task force was nothing more than a front at this point anyway. Maybe if he played both sides he could see the way through to a solution. It was a dangerous game, but what did he have left to lose, really?

He glanced at Aram again, and felt a pang of guilt. Aram Mojtabai was a genuinely good kind of guy who had built a successful career on his brilliant, if somewhat narrowly focused, mind. He didn’t deserve any of the shadows that threatened them all now. “Aram,” he said. “If you want to get out, this is a good time.”

“I know you don’t think much of me, Agent Ressler, and sometimes that’s with good reason,” he continued over Ressler’s protests, “I’m not a field agent. I’m not trained in this kind of stuff like you are, and I’m not devious like Mr. Reddington, and I’m sure as hell not as strong as Samar or Liz. But I have skills, and I will always do what I think is the right thing to do.” He shrugged. “I’m done with sticking my head in the sand. What’s the worst that happens? I die? I could have died any number of times in my life, if I really stop to think about it. For better or worse, we’re in this now.”

Ressler laughed despite the gravity of the situation. “And here I am without a ring.”

Aram snorted. “Please. You couldn’t afford me. I’m a very expensive wife. So, am I making the call?”

Ressler stretched out his calves. “Yeah. Make the call. Then let’s do another lap.”

**************************

“You redecorated,” Samar said as soon as she stepped through the door.

Ferris smiled. “Thank you for noticing. New rug.”

“What happened to the old one?”

“I spilled some wine.” She held out her hand. “Leads?”

Agent Navabi merely gave her best stony secret agent face. Ferris shook her head and motioned her over to the cork board with a map in the corner. She pointed to a series of pins in the Atlantic, and a projected path down along the coast. “This is Tom Keen’s last tracked location. I’m getting the feed directly from the satellite.”

Samar crossed her arms. “If he’s out in open water, what makes you think he’s secretly running the remnants of Berlin’s organization?”

Ferris pulled a folder off her desk and pulled out a series of photographs. “These were some of Berlin’s top operatives and allies; the logical heirs to his business interests. All dead within the span of the last three weeks. Most were cold, dispassionate, impersonal executions, but the last one is done with… _flair_. I believe they call it ‘the blood eagle’."

“The Germans,” Samar said, studying the photo. “That group Keen was with, the Disenfranchised. They’re working for the one who betrayed them?”

Ferris pulled out the last photo from the folder. “Because he gave them what they wanted. This is the man who hired the Major to place an operative inside their organization. Or at least, that’s most of him. The rest of the body parts belong to the Major and one of the older members of the Disenfranchised, which I’ve yet to identify. Keen played them off against each other in a masterfully bold stroke, I have to admit.”

“I’ll buy that he pulled this off, but what I don’t understand is why he’s on a boat now in the middle of the ocean tracking towards the Caribbean.”

“He bought a boat and the license to a diving school. My guess is that he plans -- or had been planning -- to lie low for a bit, but use a portion of Berlin’s business as supplemental income. Or as backup in case his plans fall through.” She sat down and pulled up a file on her computer. “I pulled footage off security cameras in the area’s marinas, ran it through some facial recognition programs, and came up with this.”

Samar leaned over the back of the chair to look at the grainy, low-light pictures of Elizabeth and Tom Keen entering and exiting the boat. “So she did flee with Keen and not Reddington?”

Ferris shook her head. “The time stamps.”

“Ah,” Samar said. “She left the boat before the confrontation with Connolly and didn’t return. So much for running off into the sunset with the completely screwed up but beautiful ex-not-husband.” Samar shrugged when Ferris shot her a look. “I have a type. A deeply destructive type.”

“That’s a shame,” Ferris noted. “I like Agent Mojtabai. He’s that kind of quiet guy that ends up being a really great and considerate lover in bed.”

“I don’t sleep where I work,” Samar countered, “And I definitely don’t sleep with nice guys, fun as they are to flirt with. It gets too entangling.”

Ferris chewed on her inner lip. “I could go for a little entangling nicety. Something gentle and steady. That’d be a welcome change.”

“Maybe you should rethink this whole secret operative drug dealer thing, then.”

She nodded. “Someday. But for now, I have work to do. Did you get Keen’s passports out of evidence?”

“They were already gone.”

“Hmm. The log, too, I presume? Elizabeth strikes me as thorough.”

“She was. If she was trying to distance herself, why steal them, though?”

“To get rid of him. To help him. She couldn’t bring herself to kill him, after all.” Ferris shrugged. “He lied to her, manipulated her, likely emotionally abused her for years, but taking back control of your life is a difficult, doubt-ridden process. You aren’t good enough, you don’t deserve more, he’s not that bad, really, he loves you. You should take another chance. It’s a fucked up, vicious cycle that most people can’t escape.”

Samar shifted her weight. “You sound as though you speak from experience.”

“Your pretty pal there knew exactly how to perpetuate the cycle. He likely appealed to her good memories, played on the spark of real emotion between them and exploited it.”

“How could you know that?”

“I know abusers, Agent Navabi, and I have intimate knowledge of sociopaths. I’ve often been considered one. I will tell you one thing, from a personal perspective; if you care at all about Elizabeth Keen, you should be glad she fled with Reddington and not her ex-husband. He’s not a good man, not by a long shot, but he’s not the flavor of monster that your boat boy is.”

Samar sat on the edge of the desk. “You’ve said that before; that Reddington is a different sort of beast. You were talking about Katerina Rostova, but also, I think, about others like Tom Keen. Alan Fitch, maybe.”

The ghost of a smile crossed Hannah’s face, she could feel it before she had a chance to control it. “Alan was...Alan.”

“And you deserved what he did to you?”

Ferris snorted. “Good job, Agent Navabi. That’s closer than a lot of people have gotten over the years. You can interrogate me about my past with Alan Fitch all you like another time. For now, I’d like to phone in a lead to the task force on Keen’s location so Ressler will call in the Coast Guard and get him intercepted. I know a few guys I can stock the boat with who will make sure Keen gets to us in one piece.”

“You want to interrogate him on Berlin’s organization through the task force?” Samar frowned.

Hannah grinned. “Oh, no. You’re going to interrogate him about Reddington’s.”

************************

“Harold Cooper’s being transferred tomorrow,” Reddington said by way of good morning. It was worth it purely for the look of sleepy-eyed surprise Liz gave him.

They stood on the porch with coffee, two small packed duffel bags waiting for them in the hallway. Liz cupped her mug with both hands despite the heat against her fingers and her expression warred between hope, fear, and guilt. “They’ll expect the hit on the transfer,” he explained, and proceeded to outline his plan.

She sipped the coffee slowly. “Thank you,” she said finally.

He wanted to protest that it wasn’t entirely for her sake; he felt some sort of obligation to Cooper. But the look of relief on her face, the trust she placed in him, it was too precious. And he could tell, by the tilt of her head as she looked at him, that she understood his reasons were more complex. She was simply thanking him for telling her.

Red reached out and took her coffee mug. “Let’s walk,” he said. “I’m supposed to anyway, or Dembe will have my hide.”

She placed her hand in his and they took a slow, meandering path around the farm house. “It’s beautiful out here,” she said. “Did that field used to have a horse?”

“Yes. Wretched old thing. Tried to bite your fingers.”

“Mine, or anyone’s?”

“Yes.” His lips twitched into a half-smile. “Ellery has a soft spot for anything that snaps.”

They walked until they came upon the barn. It had been re-painted a few times, repaired over the years. Liz walked up to it slowly. The hook for hay bales was lowered; Ellery had been getting down the last of her winter stores. As Liz approached the cast iron hook, she reached a hand out to it gingerly.

He winced and looked away. It was better, though, to get this memory out of the way. He didn’t want her to go through this, but Ellery was right; she would continue to self-destruct until she faced all the evil in her past and learned to move away from it. He had no idea if he could help her do it, with his own flaws so glaring and obstructive, but he did know that for once – just once – he would like to help her heal instead of cause her pain.

He hadn’t been here, only knew the cursory outline of events from Kate and Ellery and the tortured sobbing of Katerina. He knew that her father had tied Lizzy to the hook, raised her higher and higher until Katya answered his questions about where she had hidden the fulcrum. He had knocked Katya out with the hook after, Ellery had said, and it was a blessing she wasn’t outright killed.

There was bleating from inside the barn, a couple goats having kidded over the winter. Liz stumbled, but found her balance before he could reach her. She held on to the barn door, her rapid breath producing a stream of condensation in the air. “I wanted to see the baby goats,” she said, looking through him, back to a time long before that frozen March morning. “I was so excited.”

He felt his heart nearly stop as she switched to Russian in a whisper, echoing her mother’s frantic cries to her. “She was so scared,” she continued in English, not seeming to have understood the meaning of the words she had repeated. “So angry. I knew what she was saying was bad, and I wanted to tell her to stop yelling. Stop yelling at my father.”

Red felt each word cut through him as though he really could feel and share her pain. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t take it from her, couldn’t ease her burden; it was hers. He had to help her own it if he wanted to help her heal. He was not, as it turned out, a very good sin eater.

“I thought it would be fun, until she found us and started screaming. I didn’t know. I was flying, it felt like,” she continued. “But then I dropped so fast, and he hurt her and then we were leaving, and he was so rough. He had hugged me, been happy to see me when I found him in the barn, and then he put rope on my wrists and tape on my mouth and threw me in the trunk of his car.”

He closed his eyes, fighting to remain calm. He hadn’t expected...he hadn’t known the depth of it.

“I didn’t yell. That’s the worst part. I cried a little, but I didn’t yell. I didn’t fight. After a while, he took me out of the trunk and apologized, said it was a game and we had to hide because Mommy had done some very bad things. I had this rabbit, this stuffed rabbit that my mother had given me and I took it everywhere. I never let it go. I had it when he took me, when you pulled me out of the fire.”

She looked at him, her eyes focused on his features, on the present. “I remember,” he said thickly, pushing past his own emotion.

“That’s where it was. I put it there. She told me to hide it. She didn’t want to know where it was, didn’t want them to find it through her. She was going to leave me here, with…” Her eyes widened. “I didn’t recognize her. Kate. Mr. Kaplan. I didn’t recognize her. How could I not recognize her? I liked them, they were nice, like these kind old aunts out of a storybook, but they weren’t my parents.” Liz pulled in a sobbing breath and reached for him, and he opened his arms, pulling her close without a second thought. “My mother was going to leave me. She hid this thing, this _horrible thing_ that people kill for - she hid it with me, and then she was just going to leave.”

“ _How could they do this to me_?” she cried, letting the torrent loose, and he had to hold her tightly to keep her from falling. “How could they do it? I was their child. I was their fucking _child_ and they used me.”

He had no answer for her. How could he?

They stood there in the frost, the bleating of the goats and the crowing of the rooster the only companions to her soft cries. After a while, long past when they probably should have left, she pushed the hair back from her face and looked up at him. “The first thing I felt when I saw you at the Post Office was anger,” she said, “I thought, at the time, that I was being manipulated and taken advantage of, but that can’t really explain the depth of the feeling. It was like someone had kicked me in the stomach. I’ve felt drawn to you since then, some part of me always recognizing you, the memory never really gone, just buried so deeply. I was angry when I saw you, because a part of me remembered that you left me, too.”

“I gave you to Sam.”

“You _left_ me with Sam. That song; the Anniversary Waltz. You sang it to me, the first time. In the car; I remember. The old radio station and I was crying because my arm hurt, and you sang along with the radio and I fell asleep.”

Red swallowed. “He would have, anyway. It was one of his favorites. Sam always liked the old standards.”

She lowered her head to his chest again, and moved her arms to circle his ribs. “You don’t get to leave me again, Ray.”

The words were spoken against his clavicle, and he felt the reverberations of her voice through his chest. He expelled his breath in a rush of pain, remembering that long car ride to Nebraska, telling her his name was Ray when she asked. Telling her he was her guardian. She called him her knight and asked if she was a princess. _Always, to me_. He would not fail another young life that he was meant to protect.

He wasn’t that man anymore. So much had changed in him, but she cut through all those layers straight to his heart, which still felt as raw and wounded as it had twenty-five years ago. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head and he half-whispered, half-hummed, “Let this be the answer to our future years; through millions of smiles, and a few little tears.”

Liz sighed, and he felt some of the tension ease in her shoulders. “You can’t tell me everything is going to be okay.”

“No,” he agreed. He caressed her cheek gently, wiping away a stray tear, and tilted her chin up. “Hell is coming for us, Lizzy. I can’t promise everything will be okay, but I can promise you, from this moment forward, that I will _never_ let you go unless you ask it of me.”

Her eyes moved as she looked over his face, the dawning sunlight catching in their blue-gray depths. The strength and beauty and resilience of this woman astounded him, humbled him. Her lids lowered, and he wanted to kiss the last remnants of tears from her lashes; consume her sadness so that there would only be room for light.

But then her hands pressed flat against his back and she pulled him off balance, just enough to tilt his head forward so that she could reach his lips with hers. There was nothing in this world that had prepared him for being kissed by Elizabeth Keen, not like this. He had figured at some point they’d have to address and get past any lingering sexual tension; that was common when two people were pitched together into peril. He had seen it, felt it enough times.

Yet his was no tawdry stolen kiss made of hormones and animal instinct. She kissed him gently, quickly at first, and then returned for a fuller pass. It was delicate, hesitant, but filled with a questioning need that he couldn’t help but answer. She was so emotionally raw, they both were, but this was not a quest to hide behind the vacant-minded physicality of sex. This was simply… it was them, and it felt right. An affirmation.

She pulled away slowly, relinquishing his lips almost reluctantly. It took her a moment to meet his eyes, but when she did, her gaze was clear and strong. He touched a hand to her cheek.

“We should go. We have a plane to catch.” He licked his lips, they tasted of salt, coffee, mint toothpaste, and cold, fresh air.

 **  
** He didn’t think he would ever forget that taste.

 

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book Red quotes is 'Dandelion Wine' by Ray Bradbury. The song he hums are part of the lyrics to the Anniversary Waltz.


	8. Katerina Rostova

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot going on in this chapter. A lot. Maybe go in with some snacks and a good bottle of water for the trip. ;)
> 
> Special thanks to figure_of_dismay and deandratb for the beta work!

The sound of Ressler getting chewed out by the AAG could be heard only faintly down on the Post Office floor, but it was enough to make Aram wince. He glanced over at Agent Navabi but she was on the phone with the Coast Guard. He chewed on the end of his pen and pondered.

They had to give the Justice Department something -- some kind of progress. Right now they were all spinning their wheels while pretending to work on what they were meant to be working on: finding Liz and Reddington. Sooner or later Justice would see through that.

Or whomever was behind Justice this days.

Aram had picked up a paper at Starbucks on his way back from Rock Creek Park, and perused the headlines while sipping his white chocolate mocha with extra whipped cream. It probably negated any value of the run with Ressler, but Aram had a high metabolism. The Senate hearings, the warring views of various pundits…and then there, buried on page six, was a little blurb about a car crash that backed up the I-95 corridor through New York City yesterday.

Aram possessed an excellent memory for details; that’s why he was so good at coding. He didn’t have to scroll back and check his syntax -- he knew precisely what he’d typed and why. He noticed these things elsewhere when his attention was focused: he noticed an author’s favorite turn of phrase, some character actor in an obscure film that he could place in six other films immediately without having to look it up on IMDB, and a reporter’s byline when he liked their style.

The name of the deceased in the accident on I-95 was a reporter whose work he read semi-regularly on one of the more liberal online news outlets. Her specialty was writing on Islamophobia, a subject rather near and dear to Aram’s semi-practicing Muslim heart. He found her articles insightful, her research meticulous, and her grasp of complex subject matter and ability to relate it very approachable. He had even written to her once to thank her for such excellent reporting.

She was one of the authors on a big piece that had surfaced two days ago. It linked several high-ranking military personnel to a troll farm that had fanned the flames of anti-Islam rhetoric that had led to the war in Afghanistan. The group, she had argued, held stakes in various rare-earth mineral mines through a series of dummy corporations, and had profited enormously off the elevated market prices for pulling those materials out of a war zone.

And now she was dead.

Aram ran a hand over his face, allowing himself to feel the fear for a moment before he stamped it down again. He wasn’t going to run from this, wasn’t going to be a coward. He had to do what he could to foster a better world; that was the central core of what little faith he still possessed.

He ran his fingers quickly over his keyboard, bringing up the new facial recognition database. It took him only a minute or two to pull the digital copies of intake reports from police stations throughout the I-95 corridor and filter their results through a spreadsheet. From there, he created a tag that would isolate any entries in the NGI database that had anything to do with the known associates of Reddington. It was easy work; he’d been on the original Lockheed Martin team that designed the software.

He remembered the little module Liz had brought him, and his attempts to figure it out. If he’d been able to, maybe these reporters wouldn’t have been necessary. Maybe that poor woman would still be alive. Maybe not. But he was willing to bet that had been the fulcrum, the blackmail file Liz spoke of when they’d tried to search out Leonard Caul. It wasn’t merely coincidence that she mentioned it, and then days later suddenly there were Senate hearings and articles and investigations.

Either she or Reddington had released the information into the wild. But if Reddington was on the run with Liz, how was he going to protect his associates? If Aram could find even a handful of the people who had been fed the fulcrum information, maybe they could be protected. After all, the people that would be hired to take them out surely qualified for inclusion on the blacklist, and wasn’t that why they were all here in the first place?

Besides, he could spin it as information relating to Reddington’s organization, which was a nice line Ressler could feed the AAG. He ran his two data pools against each other for matches, and nearly fell out of his chair when he saw the match that had come up. “Shit,” he said.

At the same moment, Samar exclaimed a similar curse and had to stop herself from chucking her cell phone across the room. Ferris looked up from her files, and Ressler came out of the office. “What?” he asked, descending the stairs briskly.

“Keen wasn’t on the boat,” Samar said. Well, Aram thought, that was going to be an expensive misplay to explain. “He had been, but the boat was being driven by an unrelated man, who said Keen pulled him on board, hid him below deck, and then handed the boat over to him once they were out of harbor. Keen then jumped overboard and swam for another boat. Coast Guard has the serial numbers, but that boat was reported as being totaled in an accident yesterday. No sign of Liz, and the man on board said there hadn’t been a female passenger.”

“Can we get him transferred here?”

“Working on it.”

Aram had listened with half an ear while he brought up the pertinent information to his own discovery. “So. Guys. Something happened.” He punched the key that transferred his display to the main screen.

Ferris squinted up at the screen. “What are we looking at here?”

“Is that Naomi Highland?” Ressler asked.

“Subtract twenty years and almost,” Samar commented. “Is that…?”

He brought up the relocation file. “Kimberly Douglas, formerly Amy Highland, also formerly Jennifer Reddington. She was arrested four days ago outside of Boston for a DUI, and is currently being held in detention in Framingham. There are other charges pending, but lockup there is notoriously behind on their processing, apparently, so she’s just being held indefinitely at the moment. She’s been logged as having seen a lawyer, but I just ran that guy’s face too, and you’re not going to believe this.”

There was utter silence when he brought up the file, and Ressler stared, stunned. “That’s…”

“Agent Martin from the DC Field Office,” Aram confirmed. “Walter Martin.”

“That’s the agent that reclaimed Reddington from us when I had grabbed him for Mossad,” Samar said. “What does he have to do with this girl?”

“She doesn’t look happy to see him,” Ferris commented. “It’s security footage and grainy, but look at her body language. She’s afraid. I thought your files said that she disappeared out of Witness Protection seven years ago.”

Ressler ran a hand over his face. “Well, someone found her. Aram, get his face down from there; let’s keep this quiet for now. We’ll deal with Martin after we go and talk to Jennifer. Samar, why don’t you come with me. Aram, keep digging and help Dr. Ferris with whatever she needs.”

Aram kept his head down, but knew precisely what Ressler was thinking. Martin was dead, and it was entirely possible that the one who killed him was standing next to Ressler right now. If they could trust Reddington’s information, of course, and Aram was inclined to do just that. It took a lot of willful effort not to stare at Dr. Ferris and wait for some kind of reaction.

So he just kept typing.

*****************************

Mr. Vargas met them at the plane. They hadn’t spoken much on the way to the private airstrip outside of Kansas City. The FAA had clearly been on Homeland’s case to tighten up airline scrutiny, particularly after the General Ludd disaster and the plane crash in NYC last year. The chaos, of course, only made it that much easier to slip in and out.

Officials were never so open to bribery as they were when their job security was threatened. Babies and candy and the taking thereof.

“Vargas,” he said. “There is a dog on my plane.”

“He’s mine. It’s a therapy dog.” Vargas paused. “To be honest, I’m not sure which of us is in therapy. Did you know they put him up for adoption? Mere months into their relocation and he couldn’t stand the reminder. I guess she couldn’t be bothered to walk him, either. Selfish. He has a type, clearly.”

Red looked at him sharply and he dropped the complaint, but Liz had already recognized the dog. “I see,” she said. Her expression spoke volumes.

“Lizzy,” he started, then gave up and took his seat.

“Something something road to hell,” she replied, “something something good intentions. What did you name him?” she added to Vargas before Red could protest. “The dog? Or didn’t he get a new name, too?”

Mr. Vargas sat down and crossed his legs, smiling slightly. Clearly, he approved of Liz. That was good. Red didn’t need anyone’s approval for anything, but it did make life so much easier. “Indiana,” Vargas answered, and she laughed.

Liz took a seat on the long, plush bench seat. The big yellow dog immediately hopped up and curled up beside her. “What happened to Hudson?” Red asked.

She stroked the dog’s head and shot Red a look that said she wasn’t fooled by his diversionary tactics. “Upstate New York, with a friend who was moving. She bought a big farm house and is going to grow sugar beets and bake cakes and blog about it all, hoping for an eventual book deal.” The plane took off, and Liz held a steadying hand against the dog’s back, but the animal seemed completely unruffled. “It’s all aprons, knitting, and refurbished antiques for her.”

Vargas gave a theatrical shudder and Liz smiled. “Tell me about it. What _are_ sugar beets, even?”

Red didn’t miss the slightly wistful note to her voice, though she hid it well. He remembered declaring once that all he really wanted was a little house on a river. Simplicity had a powerful pull.

“So, Paris,” she said, turning to Red. He recognized it as an olive branch, a willingness not to reopen the argument over Naomi Highland.

He shook his head. “First things first. Vargas?”

Mr. Vargas picked up the briefcase by his chair and opened it up to retrieve a handful of files, which he passed over to Liz. She took them, glancing quickly between them and Reddington. “What’s this?”

“Personnel files. Agent Mojtabai would like to know what you think.”

Liz froze with one file held in the air and looked at him. “Red, if we play this game where I have to pry every ounce of information out of you, this is going to be a very uncomfortable flight for Mr. Vargas.”

Red chuckled. “Even at my own expense it might be worth it simply as repayment for bringing a dog onto my plane. I have no plans to make you extract information, Lizzy, I’m only trying to explain it as best I can. We seem to have a rather unique and unexpected situation on our hands. I recall telling you previously that I really should stop underestimating the other men in your life, my dear, and that holds even truer now.”

She watched him with a confused yet intrigued expression while Vargas stood and passed around a few bottles of cold water. The man had always wanted to be a flight attendant, but by the time he was old enough, they were shifting away from the cute suits and cocktails and into the age of rayon. Vargas couldn’t abide wearing synthetic materials.

“Last night I received a troubled call from an associate. Do you remember Special Agent Martin from the DC Field Office?”

“Yeah,” she said, opening her bottle. “Not exactly forgettable. That nose.”

“He’s dead.”

She swallowed a mouthful of water hard in surprise, and rubbed her throat. “How?”

Red set his own bottle down in the armrest cup. “Shot, most likely by the woman whose file you’re now holding. She goes by the codename ‘Persephone’-”

“Wait,” Liz interrupted incredulously, holding up a hand, “I know this tone of voice. Red, are you giving me a blacklister? Are you _kidding_ me?”

“I very much wish I was, Elizabeth, but this is absolutely not a laughing matter,” he told her as seriously as he could. “This woman, who sometimes goes by the name ‘Persephone’, is one of the deadliest operatives the Alliance has ever employed. She was Alan Fitch’s personal favorite, and if she’s known to be involved in an operation, it almost always guarantees that operation’s success. She’s ruthless, exceedingly clever, and a hell of a tactician in a way that Anslo Garrick could only dream about. He tried to locate and recruit her many times, and it cost him dearly in time, money, and personnel. She operates very much like an old samurai under the bushido code; if she has a goal, there is nothing in her path that she will not cut down to reach it. Nothing.”

Liz took his words with the gravity they deserved and held up a page. “This transfer stamp. This is the code for the Post Office. She’s there, now. Are they in danger?”

“Yes.” He sat forward. “I wish I could say otherwise, but that wouldn’t be the truth. There’s more, however. After the first call I received another, this time from Dembe. He wasn’t supposed to contact me until Paris. Much to my surprise, he was calling in order to connect me to none other than Agent Mojtabai.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand. Aram tracked Dembe and Dembe let him call you?”

Red shrugged. “I was as surprised as the next fleeing threat to national security, but I trust Dembe’s judgement implicitly. I don’t always follow it, but I trust it. It seems you had more influence on your ex-partner the Boy Scout than you realize, Lizzy.”

“Ressler told Aram to contact you?” If her eyebrows climbed any higher, they’d get altitude sickness.

He offered her a half-smile. “No, he told Aram to contact you. Seems he thinks that since you fled with me, you’re untouchable, so he’s only putting on a show of trying to hunt you. He told Aram to give the obligatory speech about coming back and dealing with things head on, but since he knew you’d ignore it anyway, he wanted Aram to pass you this information. They want a profiler they can trust, and they know they can’t trust this Dr. Hannah Ferris.”

“Because she’s Persephone.”

“It appears that way, yes.” He leaned back. “I confess, I also want to know your thoughts on this woman. I glanced through the file and there are things that don’t add up to me, but I’m looking at it from a different perspective. I read people for a living, Lizzy, and I can’t read her. She’s younger than I would have thought from her reputation, for starters.”

“She doesn’t look like a killer,” Liz commented, lifting up a picture. “She looks like she just got off the plane from Iowa, all blonde and corn-fed.”

“There’s something about her that’s strikingly familiar, yet I know I’ve never met her. Or at least, I’ve never crossed paths directly. I’ve asked Agent Mojtabai to see if he can dig up any more details on her military record. Something that deep is hard to fake; the military is a strange clubhouse, and it affects every aspect of your bearing, your personality, your patterns of thought. You can be sniffed out as a fraud in a minute by someone with even a little experience. I think she’s been using this Hannah Ferris alias for a long time, or else that’s her real identity.”

“Interesting.” She put the photo down. “Are they going to be okay, Red?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “We can only do our best to arm them with what information we have so they can protect themselves. Donald Ressler can be headstrong, stubborn, and at times willfully obtuse, but he is not an idiot. He’s a skilled agent who managed to get closer than anyone had in a long time to taking my life. It boiled down to my will to live outweighing his will to win. It tore him off balance to go up against someone like me, but he’s found his footing again. You can trust him to keep your friends safe.”

She digested his words, and nodded after a moment. “If I talk to him again, ever,” she said, her voice a little hoarse, “I’m going to tell him you said that.”

He studied her face as she tried valiantly to hide her sadness. “Do you have feelings for Donald Ressler, Lizzy?” he asked, because he needed another whip of guilt to flagellate himself with over his failure to keep her life intact.

She looked at him sharply, then shrugged slightly. “I care about him, a lot actually. It would never have been anything romantic, but we got very close to each other. I don’t...I don’t make friends easily, not real friends. Not the kind where you can show up at their door in the middle of the night and they hand you beers and order Chinese food and let you cry about how you think your husband is going to leave you. Not the kind where it tears you up seeing them in pain and not being able to do anything about it, so you just stand there and hope they notice that they’re not alone.” She sighed. “Ressler and I...we let each other in, you know? I never had a best friend when I was growing up, I didn’t know what it was like. I miss him, and I feel horrible that I did this to him.”

“Lizzy…” he trailed off, knowing there wasn’t much he could say that would help.

“I called him,” she continued, “before I called you. I wanted him to know that Cooper was innocent, that he had nothing to do with what happened and had tried to stop me. He asked me not to run, to come in and let him help me.” Liz shook her head. “I knew he couldn’t, but that’s not something he’ll accept.”

He wanted to press her about what happened with Connolly, but she was already on the edge, and would find her own way there. “Cooper isn’t sick,” she said, and she set the files to the side. Red sensed that the floodgates were about to open, and he glanced at Vargas, who tactfully relocated himself to the cockpit. “That’s what…”

Liz sat forward, elbows on her knees, running her hands over her face. She cradled her forehead. “When I left you, after we argued about my mother...I told you I could do it on my own. I couldn’t. I went to Tom.”

“I know.”

“It was partly out of spite, partly because I didn’t want to hear the reality of how idiotic I was being from Ressler. There’s still a part of me, though, that wanted to keep using Tom. Why not? He had used me for years.” She laughed hollowly. “And there’s still a part that wants to believe him. Wants to believe that he fell in love with me for real, that he wants to change. Christ, I sound like a case in a psychology textbook.”

He wanted to reach out to her, offer her even the small comfort of a held hand, but she seemed brittle, fragile. If he touched her, she might collapse. She had been pushing this out of her mind, not dealing with it, and now she was facing it fully without the protective barrier of shock.

“I went to confront Andropov, took Tom with me. There was a shootout, and Andropov was killed. I thought I saw my only chance to know the truth dying, and there in the middle of all the bullets and broken glass and blood, I just...I wanted out. I didn’t want to know, anymore. I didn’t want to be a part of this. I wanted to hide from everything, let Tom take me away on that stupid boat.” She sat up, wiped a tear off her cheek. “I almost did,” she said softly.

Yeah. He knew about that, too. His people had been watching the marina for a while. “What changed your mind?” he asked softly, knowing it hadn’t been him, not after he’d bungled handling her fraught emotions so badly.

“We’d found this flash drive. I found it when I was...getting dressed.” She looked away from him and bit her lip. Afraid, probably, that he’d scold her for sleeping with Tom when he’d been so adamant about getting the man out of her life.

“You had a physical relationship with the man for four years of your life, Lizzy. I’m not going to judge you for turning to what had always been a source of comfort to you.” He took a sip of his water and wished it was whiskey. “There’s not a person alive who hasn’t made a desperate grab at something familiar in the wake of trauma. It’s human nature. What I might think of him has no bearing on what I think of you. What was on the flash drive?”

She had turned back to him, her face a mask, but her shoulders relaxed slightly. “Medical records. Cooper’s. I knew then that I couldn’t just leave. I told Tom I’d be back, that we’d go, but he knew. I knew. That was goodbye.” She shook her head and offered Red a slight smile. “Maybe this time it’ll stick.”

“Maybe,” was all he was willing to offer in return. He wasn’t going to make her romantic decisions for her.

“They had gotten to Cooper’s doctor, faked the symptoms through Andropov’s work. The drugs in the clinical trial had been engineered to make him sick at first, then make him better. It was Connolly that had gotten him into the trial, of course. I went with Cooper to confront him. I went...” she paused, and shook her head incredulously. “I went to keep Cooper from doing anything rash.”

“Did Connolly threaten Cooper?” Harold had nearly become a surrogate father figure to Liz, which was hardly surprising. That was simply Harold Cooper’s nature, to look after his people almost as a family unit.

“He threatened everyone. Including you. Said they’d throw everyone in a dark hole, and then hang you for treason.”

He froze, surprised. He knew she cared; she had killed to save his life before. But this was different. It wasn’t just about him, though, he hoped. She said Connolly threatened everyone.

“I don’t know what happened, really. I just...he was standing there, so belligerent and...he was threatening everyone I care about, he was hurting them, going to hurt them. You. I just snapped and the gun was in my hand. I didn’t mean to shoot. I wasn’t going to. I just wanted to make him stop.”

And the emotional trauma of it all had unearthed memories buried for decades and unraveled everything he had done to try and keep her safe. Red did reach out for her then, and they sat there in silence for while, simply holding hands across the aisle. She wiped tears from the corners of her eyes with her other hand, and he passed over a small handkerchief that he kept in his vest pocket.

He looked at her, full of words he didn’t know how to say -- not that saying them could possibly right anything that had gone wrong in her life. Apologies were ultimately selfish; he couldn’t restore what was lost or damaged, only assuage his own guilt.

Her fingers squeezed his and he found her studying him with that acute look in her eye. “Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t apologize. It isn’t your fault. I had a chance to escape, Red. I don’t know how long it would have lasted, but I could have run away. I chose this life. Maybe not the fugitive part, but I chose to stay and fight and it wasn’t about getting answers from you. I didn’t come back for me; I could ignore it and run when it was just about myself. But they went after my friends, the people I care about, and that’s why I didn’t leave with Tom. You told me once that I couldn’t be free to make a choice until my name was clear, but that was only wishful thinking. I made a choice, Red, and I chose hard reality over a comforting fantasy. What happened with Connolly happened, and I have to deal with that on my conscience now. Not your conscience, Red. Mine. I pulled that trigger, I’m the killer. I have to deal with that.”

He sat forward. “You are _not_ a killer, Lizzy.”

“I am whatever I have to be, Red. I know,” she added softly when he couldn’t control the slight flinch in his expression. “I know this isn’t what you wanted for me, but this isn’t something you get to choose. You can pick what information to give me about my past, our past, and I won’t argue anymore. But you do not get to choose my present or my future, and with that comes the knowledge that you are not responsible for the consequences of my choices.”

Ellery had already lectured him on the subject, to say nothing of Dembe’s silent yet unnerving judgement of his decisions. But it was Liz’s firm, unwavering resolution that finally tore down that wall. “Okay,” he said at last.

“Okay,” she agreed. Vargas reappeared, this time with sodas and small, blessed bottles of liquor from the minibar in the forward portion of the cabin. Red poured a generous amount of gin into his tonic water. Vargas produced a lime wedge from the minibar, bless the man. Liz drained the tiny bottle of rum in three swallows and then proceeded to nurse a Sprite can. He gave her a pained expression over his delicately crafted airplane G&T.

Liz smiled, then turned her attention to the files. He watched her as she worked, sometimes openly, sometimes out of the corner of his eye when Vargas tossed him an arched eyebrow. He gave Vargas a steady look that told him to mind his own damn business, and Vargas snorted softly into his turtleneck and swiveled his chair around.

He could practically see the gears turning in Liz’s mind as she took in and analyzed information. It was sublimely attractive. It was that sharp wit of hers, that mental agility and stubborn persistence that got under his skin. At times it was like working with the very best of Sam and Katya all together, only rolled into a package that was a heady combination of vulnerable and resilient, seductive in her open honesty.

They hadn’t mentioned the kiss, and he had no intention of bringing it up, especially not now after having spoken so much about… well, about others. The kiss had happened, and he would savor the memory, but it was an ephemeral moment in time. It belonged on the farm, outside the barn, in the frosty grass of an early March morning.

When they stopped at the motel to change before heading to the airport, they shifted inexorably back to former personas. He was the dapper criminal, she was the agent on the run. It was comfortable territory, and by all rights he should maintain this distance between them and defend it with moats filled with crocodiles and lances.

He knew this would happen--that if he got too close, he would be ensnared. Left forever wanting more and more. He was an expert at deceiving himself on what was enough. There was never enough. His need was too deep, and he had been so very cold for so very long.

He could not place his burden on her shoulders. She had enough of her own. So he would swallow it down, skim off the top of her affection, and suffer in silence until she inevitably ran back to her Boy Scout or worse, decided that it wasn’t goodbye after all with Tom.

“You should sleep,” she murmured, eyes still on the files.

“Hmm?”

“Sleep,” she repeated. “You didn’t last night. I woke up and saw you pacing outside. Get some rest before Paris. We have, what, six hours or so left?” She looked up at him and her eyes dared him to protest.

“I’m fine,” he said, and at the same time she shook her head and said, “Nope.”

The damn dog had shifted off the bench seat and was now at Vargas’s feet. Liz picked up the files and scooted to the end of the seat, motioning him over. He gave her a pained look, and she rolled up one of the blankets, placing it next to her leg as a pillow. She patted it in invitation. “I’m not going to shut up about it.”

He gave her a look that, while he admitted defeat by shrugging off his suit jacket and delicately draping it over the back of his chair, said that he wasn’t amused. She shrugged. He eyed the seat and then her and motioned to his chair.

“You’re not that tall,” she countered, and patted the makeshift pillow again. Red thought he heard Vargas snort, but that obviously couldn’t be, since the man valued both his employment and his life.

He loosened his tie slightly and took up the required position, knowing full well he wouldn’t be able to get a wink of sleep now anymore than he had been able to the previous night. There was simply too much to think about, to plan. But he would appease her. It might be safer, more familiar territory to argue and resist, but he was tired of it. He had no wish to restore the gulf of animosity between them.

The smile, when she looked down at him with approval...the small space of the airplane cabin seemed so much brighter. He folded his arms across his chest and huffed as he shifted onto his side and rested his back against the bench. She laughed softly.

He exhaled slowly, thinking how ridiculous this was, but then he felt the weight and warmth of her arm across his shoulder. Her thumb idly stroked the back of his hand as she read. The fragrance of hotel soap and that indefinable something that was Lizzy enveloped him, and he closed his eyes.

********************************

“Any word?”

“They just landed in Boston.” Aram hung up the phone and looked over at Dr. Ferris. She stood bracing herself against a table, looking down at a spread series of photographs. Her blonde hair was always swept up and pinned, but it looked long. The navy suit and coral blouse were complemented by a pair of small gold hoops and a thin necklace. She didn’t look like a cold-blooded killer, but then neither had Tom Keen.

Still, best to act as though he gave her the benefit of the doubt. And maybe he would. He just would maybe also make sure to never completely trust anything she said. Or leave his gun somewhere that wasn’t his shoulder holster. He had taken to wearing one for his service weapon ever since the incursion a year and a half ago.

“Tell me about the fulcrum, Agent Mojtabai.”

He blinked as she looked over at him. “I’m sorry?”

“The fulcrum,” she repeated.

Aram shrugged. “I know about as much as you. Whatever’s in the file and coming out on the news reports. I know it’s something Mr. Reddington wants, or wanted, and that Liz had it. Okay, that part’s probably not in the file. Liz had it for a while, but it wasn’t until Reddington was shot and in danger that he had her seek out this former CIA operative, Leonard Caul. Apparently he was the key to reading it.”

Ferris crossed her arms and chewed the corner of her lip. “She came to you first, didn’t she?” When he didn’t reply immediately, she smiled slightly. “That’s what I would do, if I were her. If I didn’t fully trust Reddington, or if I was afraid once he had whatever this fulcrum was he’d disappear.”  
  
“I can’t imagine Liz wouldn’t want him gone. He’s practically ruined her life.”

“What life? The life with the violent mercenary pretending to be a nice school teacher? The boring entry level FBI pay grade?” Ferris shook her head. “Even if she saw it that way, that he ruined her life, what did she have left? The task force, maybe, but what is the task force without Reddington? What was her life anymore without Reddington? He left her with nothing else.”

Aram considered it, then shook his head. “She had us. Ressler and I, for certain. Even if we were no longer colleagues, we would still be her friends. Maybe you’re right, though. Maybe she worried about him disappearing. She’s gone after him before when he was in danger. I think she cares about him, at least a little.”

“And I’m also right that she came to you, first. She trusts you.”

“She did,” he agreed. “Trust me, that is. Also came to me with the fulcrum, yes. She didn’t say what it was, and I didn’t ask. I couldn’t figure it out, though. I tried everything I could think of to read it, but it needed an encryption key that I couldn’t crack. Mechanical encryption; stuff out of WWII and James Bond films. Closest I could get was a British Type X, but it still didn’t work.”

Ferris tapped her chin. “So Agent Keen had only one part of it–presumably from her mother–and needed Leonard Caul for the other. I’m assuming we don’t have much on Caul’s black ops records?”

“Liz said he didn’t seem to have known Reddington before they met recently. But he may have met Katerina Rostova,” he added when he saw her expectantly arched eyebrow.

“I don’t know what to do about the murder charge, not yet. It might be that there’s nothing we can do. But if we can prove that Elizabeth Keen isn’t a rogue sleeper KGB agent, then we’re a step closer to clearing her name.” When he looked at her in surprise, she shrugged. “There’s a lot at play here, Agent Mojtabai. I know you don’t trust me– no, don’t argue, you’re right not to, especially given what this task force has been through. You don’t know me, and I’m afraid I can’t really enlighten you. What I can tell you is that there are a number of forces at play here, and your friend has been swept up in tides far beyond her strength to swim against. Reddington’s tried for decades, and he’s only managed to tread water.”

Aram swallowed with difficulty, not entirely knowing what to make of Ferris’s placid expression in the wake of this near-confession. Then she turned her head and the spell was broken. “What made you conduct that search this morning? The one that netted Jennifer Reddington?”

He found his voice after a moment. “I had a hunch. I wasn’t looking for her, though, I was looking for any known associates of Mr. Reddington’s. There was a reporter who turned up dead, and I thought… well, I thought if Reddington released the fulcrum through all these news outlets, it’s possible that they’re part of his organization or linked somehow. He had to get the information to them some way. I thought members of his organization might be targeted by this cabal they keep referring to. I thought if any of them had come close to running in with the law, then that might be a lead.”

Ferris looked impressed, and even said so. Aram wanted to accept the praise happily, but found he wasn’t quite able to. If she was the operative Reddington said she was, then he wasn’t particularly happy to be patted on the back by a ruthless killer.

“Let’s put these instincts of yours to the test. Where else could one possibly look for information on covert operations besides the known databases?” She sat down on a stool, crossing one navy-clad leg over the other.

“Besides the Pentagon, Langley, and the others?” Aram sat back in his chair and thought. “We know we can get some files from them, and while they might be heavily redacted, that shouldn’t be a problem if I can locate Reddington’s covert decoder. Otherwise...hmm. They literally burn all paper trace of covert operations if they need to, so you can’t go to hard sources. All that’s left are the accounting ledgers and that doesn’t… wait. It does.”

“Follow the money,” she agreed. “But if you follow it to the original sources, after all this time, there may not be any original sources left. Or sources either the cabal or Reddington haven’t gotten to.”

“The money trail gets us at least a ballpark. I’d need to get into the archive at Langley, though.”

“Reddington wasn’t CIA. You need to get to into the Pentagon, somehow. I can handle any remnants at Langley.”

***********************************

“Agent Ressler, at least turn the radio on if you aren’t going to talk to me.”

“What makes you say I’m not talking to you?”

“The fact that you haven’t spoken a word to me since we boarded the plane at Reagan.”

“National.” Ressler glanced at Samar, then turned his eyes back to the road. “Locals call it National.”

“Donald.”

“Samar.”

She sighed. “Fine. I’m turning on the radio.”

“Who do you work for, Samar? And don’t tell me Mossad.”

She tugged the edge of her knit cap down a little farther over her curls. “Mossad and the United States Government, at the moment. I don’t receive payments from anyone else.”

Ressler leaned an elbow on the edge of the driver’s window, feeling the cold beyond the glass through his coat and jacket sleeves. “That’s not what I asked.”

“It is precisely what you asked. It might not be what you mean. I don’t work for Reddington. We have assisted each other in the past, but I’m not on his payroll.”

“Did you kill the Scimitar?”

“Yes,” she answered immediately, which surprised him. “He killed my brother. That’s what this is about. Reddington promised me information on the death of my brother if I managed to get on the task force and keep an eye on Elizabeth Keen’s safety. So I did, and he gave me the man responsible for the bombing that took my brother’s life.”

He chewed on his lip for a moment. “But there’s more to that story.”

“It appears so.”

“Did Hannah Ferris also offer you information?”

“Yes, and followed through on that offer. She needed to secure my cooperation once I found one of her safehouses.”

Ressler cursed under his breath. “Samar, what the hell is going on?”

“She’s a mole. That much I know for certain. I just don’t know whose mole.” Samar offered him a slight smile. “She could be the cabal’s, but she could also be ours against them. Or even Reddington’s–she knows a hell of a lot about him, and it feels to me like she’s leading us through his past by our noses. My turn. What are you plotting with Agent Mojtabai?”

Ressler raised an eyebrow. “That obvious?”

“You’re both adorable and terrible at being secret operatives. You frown too much and Aram tried to slip a radio bug into my purse yesterday.”

Of course he had. Ressler sighed. “Samar, I like you, but I have no idea if I can even begin to trust you.”

“Well, I trust you, so at least we have that.” She looked askance at him. “And we both trust Reddington, even though we don’t like it and he pisses us off immensely.”

“I don’t recognize my life anymore.”

“But you’re alive to live it, Donald. Hold on to that and everything else will fall into place.”

*****************************

When Liz pictured Paris in her mind, she thought of flower boxes and charming little restaurants and old stone buildings. Monmarte, Red had told her, gesturing in a vague direction out of the hotel room window. That was what most Americans thought of as Paris; the little village of stone rowhouses, wrought iron, and the curving Art Nouveau doorways.

“Teach me some French,” she said in the car, valiantly trying to mimic his accent and pronunciation, but getting tripped up by her experience in Spanish. That had led to a tangent on Barcelona, and Liz was left with enough cursory French to know how to ask for the bathroom, the hotel, and the airport.

“How many languages do you speak?” she wondered later, as the strange little man Red had introduced as Mr. Vargas carried in luggage to the hotel room. The bags were expensive, full, no doubt, of equally expensive clothes. Red had apologized for taking the liberty, but made a point of telling her to reject whatever she wished. It was clothing for a persona, but she need not feel bound to it. Her comfort was more important; nothing aroused suspicion more than discomfort.

Red hadn’t selected anything personally, he made a point of telling her, possibly to absolve himself of responsibility if she hated everything. He’d simply provided an estimate of her sizes and a preferred color palette. _While I know your shoe size and your suit size, Lizzy, I had to make educated guesses at other things._ She thought of his often intense gaze, and wondered precisely how much of her body he had mentally sized.

“Many,” he answered her language question, opening the hotel’s windows to a wonderfully mild evening. “When you add in dialects, it pads out the count. All the Romance languages, most of those spoken in Asia Major, some Norse and Danish. German. Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi. I can get by in a couple tribal African tongues, but French will get you most of the way that English doesn’t in Africa, thanks to the Belgians.” He turned around to face her, leaning casually against the table by the window. Long, white muslin curtains fluttered in the breeze. “Russian, of course. It started with Russian.”

She watched him as he loosened his tie and unpinned his cuffs. The nonchalant stance, the glow of the evening sunset on his face, the drapes billowing around him and caressing his leg; it touched something in her that she hadn’t expected. He’d always oozed that charm and allure that powerful, sophisticated men have in spades, and she was free now to admit she wasn’t immune to it. There had always been her job, her marriage, or her anger between them as a barrier, but now she had none of those things.

It was easy to forget how dangerous he was when he fell asleep with his head against her leg on the plane, or held her crying outside a barn on a cold spring morning. She had always been attracted to danger like a magnet; Tom was the only exception. Well, at the time he had been an exception to that rule. Maybe that was why she had clung so hard to him, to the illusion he created; he had fit perfectly inside the box she created for herself of good little Liz.

Red was an intoxicating combination of charisma and power, gentleness and danger. He didn’t hide any aspect of his demeanor, wielding each as a finely honed weapon. He was the kind of man that a woman would fight to hold on to, driven crazy by the need to reclaim his addictive attention, to be the one–the only one–he would turn to, for whom he would let his guard down.

Raymond Reddington was the kind of man you warned your girlfriends away from, despite your own secret, dark fantasies. At times, when he smiled at her or looked at her from under one of those hats he wore, it was like he’d stepped out of a crime noir film, all shadow and undeniable masculinity. Small wonder Madeline Pratt had gone to such extremes to get his attention.

He watched her, his head tilted curiously, trying to read the thoughts in her head. Maybe he could, to some extent. He’d always been able to read her well, though that wasn’t a conversation she felt like reopening. “Do you think I speak Russian?” she asked, opening one of the suitcases and pulling out a cashmere sweater. It was a light blue, which she was sure to spill coffee on sooner rather than later. _You’re a winter, not an autumn._

“You have,” he replied, surprising her both with his words and the proximity of his voice. She turned her head and he was beside her, shirtsleeves rolled up slightly, helping her unpack. “Many hands make light work, Lizzy.”

“When did I speak Russian?” He took the sweater out of her hands with an admonishing look as she tried to fold it to put in the dresser. He slid it onto a padded hanger.

“Outside the barn.” He opened a small bag which turned out to be full of undergarments, and tactfully passed that over to her. “You repeated some things that your mother must have said. I don’t think you understood it, or realized you were doing it, but your pronunciation was flawless. I think it likely you have a bit of vocabulary buried somewhere, but you were encouraged to speak English from the age of a toddler, so I doubt you know much. You were reading in English at three, but not Russian, I do remember being told that. Katya was disgruntled about it.”

She sat on the edge of the bed beside the small case and began automatically folding the items she drew from it. “You knew her well enough to use the diminutive form of her name?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and she felt an echo of that familiar panicking anger, the sense that she was being pulled underwater and he wouldn’t throw her a rope. She looked away, not wanting him to see it, not wanting to argue. The pain of the past year, of doubting him and fearing betrayal, of anger and frustration and the gnawing fear that she was really alone in this and there was no one she could trust… those wounds had started to heal, but they were still tender.

Red hung a series of garment bags in the closet. “She was my partner, briefly.” The words were spoken in the cedar-lined depths of the wardrobe, to the empty clothes silently hanging, which offered no judgement or argument back to him.

Her breath seemed frozen in her throat, and she didn’t move for fear of startling him to remembering that he had sworn not to tell her anything. When nothing else was forthcoming, she closed her eyes, annoyed at how much that trifling burst of hope had hurt.

But then something shifted and his weight settled on the end of the bed beside her. Her hands had clasped painfully, and he reached over to pry one free. “Saint Petersburg, 1983. It was Leningrad, then. The details of the operation don’t really matter, suffice it to say it had to do with submarines and technology that is no longer relevant. What matters is that they sent me. I was young, only twenty-three, but I’d shown a lot of aptitude for that kind of work.” He shrugged. “Besides that, I was young and apparently good-looking enough to be considered bait for this crazy Russian super spy that was practically urban legend, but had a weakness for young, pretty men like vampires have a weakness for garlic.”

“...were you…?”

“Lovers? No. It was hogwash, of course. A cover for another case of hers that had spiraled out of control and become legend. She had concocted this alias that was one part Catherine the Great, two parts Elizabeth Bathory, and the Kremlin ran with it.” He shook his head with that amused disapproval she had come to recognize in him whenever he dealt with so-called superiors who were anything but.

She felt unaccountably glad to know that Red hadn’t been intimate with her mother. The idea that he had...it felt wrong. Why it felt wrong was something she was just beginning to understand but not quite sure she should acknowledge.

“I was skeptical going in that she even existed. There were too many stories. Katya was a master at the game, though. I learned most of how to craft a larger-than-life persona from her; she’s the genesis of who I am to the world now. She wasn’t everything they said she was, but she was damn close.” He squeezed her hand gently. “She was also pregnant with you.”

Red let go of her hand and stood, walking over to the little table in the corner which served as a bar cart. He poured himself a few fingers of cognac and offered her a glass, which she accepted. “Did you get her into the U.S.?”

“Yes,” he acknowledged. “She came to me, sought me out in order to defect. We spun a story, made it seem like some big romantic thing; Russian super spy falls in love with young American idealist, and so on. She didn’t want anyone to know the real reason, on my end or hers.”

“Me.”

“Partially.” He sipped the cognac and sat across from her in the delicate gilt chair by the table. “She wouldn’t have told me, but I guessed. It was early, she wasn’t showing yet, but I could tell from her body language. I had watched…” he paused, looking down at his glass and rolling it slightly between his palms. The cut glass and rich amber liquid caught the pink glow of the sunset and reflected it back across his hands, arms.

“My wife was a dancer,” he began again, seemingly on a tangent, but Liz knew his patterns of thought well enough to understand that this was related. “Principal dancer for a ballet company in Boston. I never really noticed it when we were first together, but she sacrificed everything for her art. Her body, her health, it wasn’t something separate; it was all a tool to her, a means of expressing that art. She was...perfect, when I first saw her, this angel spun of gold and fire who moved with this delicate, almost ephemeral grace. She didn’t leap through the air, the air lifted her in its arms, the stage caressed her feet. She was extraordinary.”

The reverence in his voice as he spoke, the picture he painted with his words, held her spellbound. For a moment, she forgot to breathe, lost in this image of a young man and his dancing love. She pictured a woman dancing alone in a studio, lit by a sunbeam, and a young man drawn inexorably towards the light.

He drank again, a heavier pull. “We were kids, about to go our separate ways. I was moving south, she was going to leave for London. Then...well, things happen, don’t they? Especially to the young and brash. She wanted to keep it, had a romantic view of motherhood, and when our families found out, there was a mess. So we sat down and decided whose dream it was that would have to die. She took hers with both hands and throttled the life out of it.”

Red set the glass down, passing a hand over his face before he continued. “She changed completely when she was pregnant. In many ways, but her physical demeanor especially. She had always been careless and dismissive of herself, her needs, but she moved differently with Char..Charlotte. She was more protective, careful, conscious.”

The pain and hoarseness in his voice, the way he had hesitated over the name of his child, cut straight through Liz, and she couldn’t swallow past the hard lump in her throat. She remembered some of the photos from his file; a young, handsome man with sandy blond locks in his face, a cocksure smile. Weariness and experience had settled on that face, the weight of decades worth of fears and worries etching lines like rivers in his skin, pulling at the corners of his eyes and mouth, the clench of his jaw.

She saw, sometimes, flashes of that young man when he smiled at her in genuine pleasure or she startled a laugh out of him, when they were in the middle of a case, working in tandem and playing off each other to perfection. Then, too, she saw it; the slip in his guard, the chink in the armor, the man under the suit and the years.

It would all settle back into place, the curtain falling across his eyes once again. Raymond Reddington, the master criminal, would reemerge. She had thought once that it was those moments – the hard moments when he shot a man who had betrayed him in the past or pushed a tortured monster of a man into a vat of acid – that was the real man; the rest was an act. But that wasn’t it, not really. The truth was far more complex. He was both the light and the dark; a good man hidden for so long in shadow that he had let it become him.

Liz pushed the lump in her throat down with a swallow of cognac as Red continued his tale. “There was something in the way Katerina moved, the way she held herself. She was careful not to exhibit any of the tell tale body language,” he mimicked placing his hand over the swell of a pregnant belly, “but she would turn a certain way, was far more cautious and hesitant in taking shots or dealing violence than I had expected to find in one of her reputation.”

“So you pieced it together.”

“Yes.” He shrugged again. “I think so, at least. I don’t know. I’ve thought about it from time to time over the years, and I’m never sure.”

“Never sure that she was pregnant or that she was playing you?”

“The latter. She was...Lizzy, everything you think about me, about how manipulative and cunning I can be...none of that holds a candle to what Katerina Rostova could do.” His lips twisted into that resigned half-smile and he shook his head. “Or at least, what she made you think she could do. That was the trick, of course. While her sincerity was breaking your heart, she could be cutting your gut open with a hunting knife.”

Liz swallowed. “You make her sound psychopathic.”

“She wasn’t, merely dedicated. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d learned a lot from her about how to be,” he gestured toward himself, “me. She taught me how to instill fear, to wield intimidation with pinpoint precision. I spent months being dragged around to seven hellish corners of the USSR by that woman, and it was a more intensive training than I would ever receive from the Pentagon.”

“Why didn’t you–”

“–simply bring her over and hand her to my superiors and call it a day? Because I was young and foolish, and I wasn’t about to accept her insincere defection only to have her double-cross me as soon as we were over the border.” He shook his head again. “It was a strange combination of brashness and cynicism. I wanted more. I wanted names of covert operatives inside the United States, I wanted shipping routes of clandestine weapons destined for Central America and Africa, I wanted the encryption codes for the dispatches to the military command in Afghanistan. She gave up everything. I was so enthralled with my success that it took me a long time to spot her deeper agenda.”

“Defecting in order to protect her daughter.” Liz finally gave up on the cognac she wasn’t going to drink and set it down on the floor.

Red looked away and flinched. “If I said that was the case, Lizzy, it would only be said to make you feel better. Is that what you want?”

Before he had finished the question, she knew what the answer really was. “The fulcrum. She was gathering her own information at the same time she was feeding information to you. She was covering her bases in case they came after her.”

“I felt terrible, in the end, not getting her out before you came along. I had been darting between the States and Russia, carting information back to my superiors, bringing empty promises back to Katya. When I heard she was in labor, my guilt made me sloppy, and they tailed me to the safe house in Moscow. I’m not sure who it was, to this day, KGB or the cabal, or some combination of both, but it was a hellish little siege that I still have nightmares about.”

He sat forward, elbows and forearms resting on his knees, fingers clasped. His eyes found hers and held them. “You were born in a hail of bullets, Maria Ivanovna Rostova,” his voice caressed her birth name and she felt a shiver in her very core. “You carry the names of your grandparents: Ivan and Maria Rostov. He was a poet, and she was an artist and schoolteacher. Your mother felt their names would be a better armor than her own, and invoked their memory to keep you safe.”

“You were there.”

Red looked at his empty glass, then replaced it on the tray. “Always.” He ran a finger along the rim of the tray. “It’s easy to find patterns in life, especially when they aren’t truly there. It’s simply how the human mind is built to think. You always have to be aware of the bias, to account for it and readjust accordingly. But the Russians have a word to explain that feeling of inevitability, of fate: _судьба_. In Arabic, it’s known as the will of God: _insha’Allah_. Different connotations, of course, with one more cynical, one more celebratory and accepting. The point remains across cultures, however -- the thought of how comforting it is to not be wholly responsible for what crosses your path. The faith that everything is scripted by whatever force or higher power drives the world.”

He turned back to her, and her breath caught at the look in his eyes. It was...if there were words capable of describing the way Raymond Reddington looked at her, Liz felt sure it was in a language no one knew. “Madeline Pratt asked me how I chose you, Lizzy, and I told her it was Fate. _Insha’Allah_. I choose the celebratory, the accepting.”

A sound escaped her throat, halfway between a sob and a sigh. Her hands reached for him almost by instinct. She wasn’t sure who stood first, but she was soon on her feet and wrapped in his arms, her head cradled against his shoulder. He had one arm around her waist and the other enveloped her shoulders, his hand tangled in her hair. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her scalp, the press of his cheek against her forehead; slight stubble grazing her skin. His neck was warm and she pressed a finger to the small scar where she had once threatened his life. He held her tighter in response, and she pressed a kiss to it.

He pulled away, but not before she’d felt the way he tensed when her lips touched his skin. She didn’t want to let go, she wanted more of his warmth and feel, but he was bending over to pick up her untouched drink and moving away from her. She watched him silently, the truth of what she really wanted making itself known in her mind with a sudden, crystal clarity.

She would give it time, though. He wouldn’t trust it between them, not yet. He would justify it as shock or a battlefield bond. There had been a glimpse of it, at the Kings’ auction, and he had pushed back forcefully against even that small sliver. He wanted her close, but not so close that she undid him. Hedgehog’s Dilemma, only with bullets and knives and wooden stakes instead of quills.

He placed her drink on the table, still untouched, and told her that he needed to unpack his own shipment in the next room. There was a connecting door, Red pointed out, to be used in an emergency. He would brief her in the morning about their target, and Vargas would be by to help her with a look.

“A look for what?” she asked, pausing with the cognac halfway to her lips. She had picked it back up simply to have something to do with her hands.

He turned at the connecting door and gave her a look that she could only describe as downright rakish. “You know I love taking you to parties, Lizzy.” A slow, rather sultry smile followed, and then he disappeared through the door.

She stared at the door for a few long minutes, but then shook herself and finished squaring away her new clothing. The sleepwear provided was decidedly not designed for sleeping, or maybe all French woman preferred sleeping while wrapped in a yard of lace. She finally located a more simple, if somewhat small, satin nightgown and slid that over her head before crawling gratefully into the lush bedding provided.

She crawled out a moment later, cursing, and then crawled back in after latching the window firmly and checking that her main door was locked. She lay facing the main entrance and window, with her back to the connecting door. It made her feel safe knowing that Red was on the other side. The bustle of the city and crowds of people had triggered a sense of anxiety, though she was hardly known in Paris. Still, the story undoubtedly made international news; after all, she had shot the Attorney General.

The memory of his smug face as he threatened everyone she cared about made her shudder. She pushed it from her mind and closed her eyes. Exhaustion crept in and pulled her under its lethargic spell.

_There were pine trees everywhere, it was like a forest, but some had pretty lights on them. Mama had told her about the New Year and Father Frost, but it was different here. Everywhere was different, though. Her world was the backseat of a car, different cars, different places. Some were hot, some cold. She had liked the beach, but they hadn’t stayed there for very long._

_Sometimes the man came that she liked. He was nice to her. He smelled good, and he always picked her up and never yelled at her. The other man, Papa, sometimes he yelled when he was there. It wasn’t until the other girl had called the Good Man ‘daddy’ and told her that it meant the same thing as ‘papa’ that she understood what Papa was supposed to be. Maybe if she told Papa that she knew his name meant ‘father’, then he would be more like the Good Man was with the other girl._

_The other girl had been happy to see her, but Mash...Lizzy, didn’t know her. That was okay, the other girl said, it was a while ago, you probably don’t remember me. The other girl had her curly hair all pulled back and wrapped up in red and green ribbon for Christmas. They were picking out a tree. A tree for what? For Christmas! The other girl took her hand and they ran through the rows of trees, laughing._

_The other girl stopped in front of a big tree and began looking at the branches, but Lizzy saw a flash of white behind another tree. A rabbit, just like her favorite bunny, but real! She took off after it, watching it dart around, laughing. A voice called her name in exasperation, and she turned around, tensing. But it was the Good Man, and he held out a hand. Please don’t run off like that, you scared Charlotte. She thought she lost you. And the other girl came running, tears in her eyes. The Good Man knelt in the snow and hugged both of them. Come on, let’s go._

_Charlotte._

Liz jolted awake, pushing herself away from the pillows with a gasp. She fought to hold on to the thread of the dream, or the memory, she wasn’t sure which. Trees. Christmas. A rabbit. Red had been there, she knew that voice.

 _Charlotte_. She had known his daughter.

She tried to clutch at the memory of the girl, pull it closer, but it kept slipping away. An overwhelming sense of pink, strawberry perfume and a tube of lip gloss, a box of mermaid dolls under a brass bed. _This is a Cabbage Patch Kid_. Toes, she could walk on her toes. _This is what you call_ en pointe.

No face, just the hair and ribbons. The sense of a friendly smile, the sharing. A Friend. She hadn’t ever had a Friend. Charlotte wanted her to stay. Charlotte had wanted her. Nobody but Charlotte had ever wanted her.

Liz curled up tightly, the painful grief of her childhood cutting her heart into ribbons. She felt a helpless rage at the thought of what had happened to that sweet little girl who had befriended a Russian refugee. Her heart broke for the girl, for herself in that long-lost friend, and what pieces were left shattered all over again at the grief and pain of a father who had failed in his primary role; protector.

When the silent sobs finally subsided, she uncurled and pulled the pillow down to where she had nestled in the middle of the bed. No wonder Red had gone to such lengths to protect her, to try and give her a life. It was hard to forgive him for Sam, for bringing Tom into her life, but where forgiveness was hard, understanding came easier. No, she could not condone those choices through forgiveness, necessarily, but she could understand now the unrelenting force of guilt and self-hatred that drove him to such lengths. She could accept it.

She accepted that the past had happened, and that they had to move forward. The only way forward was together. They had drifted apart for so long, their lives running mostly parallel and crossing only occasionally, but now, if they were going to make it through this crucible, they had to merge. He had tried to have it both ways, to cross her path and correct her course without pulling her into his world, but he had failed to realize his world was also hers. She was born of it, and its reclamation of her life was inevitable.  

Liz closed her eyes again, and this time fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

***********************

Samar stood behind Ressler as he all but grabbed the nurse by his collar and hauled him over the desk. She turned, letting him handle that end of things and instead scanned the hallway of the hospital. They had arrived at the holding facility in Framingham only to discover that there had been an altercation among the inmates. A few people had been beaten pretty badly, Kimberly Douglas among them.

Ressler had given Samar a look, and she knew precisely what it meant and shared the sentiment; something bad was going on here.

They had driven like hell to get to the hospital, to discover that Kim Douglas was missing from her hospital room. “We should report it as a kidnapping,” the nurse said to Ressler. “She had a broken tibia, there was no way she could have walked out on her own.”

Samar broke off to look at the room. The hospital staff had already been through, tidying up the snapped intravenous line, reclaiming the catheter bag and bloody bandages so no one could sue them for leaving out bio waste. It was a solo room. There had been a guard outside, but he had disappeared. Ressler would get photos and footage.

At the foot of the bed the medical chart was still clipped in place. Samar reached over and tore it off the clipboard, quickly folding it and tucking it into the pocket of her leather jacket. She looked over the room once more, hoping to find any sort of personal item left behind, but there was nothing.

Ressler poked his head in. “You have a print kit?”

“There’ll be prints all over, it’s a hospital.”

He pointed to the bed. “The morphine drip. Dust that button. You ought to be able to get a partial thumb off that.”

A look passed over his face and he ducked back out into the hallway. He’d had some kind of injury, she recalled. It was before she had joined the task force, but she’d read all their files. A few things clicked in her mind at that moment, some oddness in his behavior. She had thought alcohol, originally, but he never smelled of it, and now she knew why. Ironically, the one person he should speak to about it, who supposedly specialized in treating operatives in high-stress situations, was the one person none of them trusted: Dr. Ferris.

Worry tickled the back of her mind, but she pushed it down. Ferris had no reason to harm Aram, and he was hardly alone with her at the Post Office. But Aram Mojtabai was not a covert agent, and for a good reason; he was a terrible liar. Raised in a religious house with the best teachings of Judaism and Islam together, he was a shining example of both: righteous, truthful, caring, and faithful.

The combination of time and their work had chipped away at his faith, but he was such a gentle, genuinely good person that it made Samar feel naturally protective of him. He wouldn’t thank her for that, already fighting a feeling of inferiority to the rest of the team. Yet it was people like him, the good people in the world, that kept Samar fighting when she would rather give up.

She couldn’t tell him that. Would not. Only God knew how long she would remain on this path before she was pulled somewhere else. Getting attached would only make the parting more painful than it already would be. She couldn’t spare him his pain. He already cared too much.

Samar did indeed pull a partial print off the morphine drip. She bagged it and tucked it into her jacket along with the medical chart. Ressler met her at the car. “Anything?” he asked as they got in. She handed him the bagged print and the medical chart, reaching under the passenger seat for his work laptop.

She punched in her code and booted up the secure wifi hotspot so she could send a copy of the security footage back to Aram. She watched the footage for a moment before she realized that Ressler wasn’t. He was staring at the medical file with a frown. “What is it?”

He didn’t answer, pulling out his phone instead and punching in a number. “Aram, I need you to do something for me. Hold on, I’m putting you on speaker.”

“...the footage from Agent Navabi. What do you need?” came Aram’s voice. It was a surprising relief to hear it. Her fear for his safety had run deeper than she wanted to acknowledge.

Ressler tossed her a look. “I need you to pull up the file on Naomi Highland. I don’t have access to it from here.”

“Hold on.” There was the sound of typing in the background, Aram’s voice more distant as he answered a question from someone. It was Ferris, asking about lunch and then asking what was happening. “Got it up.”

Ressler flattened the medical chart against his thigh and pointed to something. Samar leaned over. “Aram, what does it say her blood type is?”

“Blood type? Uh...hold on...She’s A positive. Why?”

Samar frowned. “And Kimberly Douglas is O positive,” she said. “So Reddington must be O. I’m not sure what–”

“Reddington is B negative.”

“How do you know? His blood type isn’t on file,” Aram said. They heard a sharp inhale. “He gave you a field transfusion when you were shot. I saw it, I had the camera feed up. You have the same blood type.”

Ressler and Samar exchanged looks. She sat back. “You’re sure this is the same woman that was taken into protective custody as Jennifer Reddington?” she asked.

“One hundred percent,” Aram replied. “I have her file. There haven’t been any pictures added in about a decade, but I ran those we have through the aging software, and ran them together with the mugshot through the recognition software. It’s her. There were swabs and tests done when they processed them into the system; Jennifer Reddington is definitely Carla Reddington’s daughter. And they are both definitely Kimberly Douglas and Naomi Highland, respectively.”

“She’s not his daughter,” stated the voice of Dr. Ferris. “Well, isn’t that a twist?”

“Not biologically, no,” Ressler agreed.

Samar considered it. “That might not mean anything. Adoptive parents don’t love their children any less, and if Reddington was her stepfather, that doesn’t make his paternal feelings any less relevant. Or he might not have known that he wasn’t the father.”

“It might not mean anything,” Ressler acknowledged, “but then again, it might mean everything. We need to find her. As of right now, she’s our top priority.”

***********************************

The little gym was just like she remembered. Christ, Hannah hated this place. It smelled like body odor and old socks. She’d spent too much time face down on that mat, bled too much on it.

Fighting had taught her the true depth of the well of viciousness she had inside of her. It wasn’t enough to be defensive. The best way to maintain a defense was to erect a wall of pain so intense that no one dared cross it. She had to commit to it. So there were thumbs in eyeballs, the ends of noses bitten clean off, fingers snapped like twigs. Never give in. She had bitten straight through a man’s carotid artery once when she’d been left with no other option, her arms pinned behind her, legs holding hers immobilized, forearm crushing the life out of her windpipe. She had leaned into it, nearly blacking herself out, baring her teeth like a dog and snapping at whatever got in her jaws first.

Blood had filled her mouth, gotten in her nose, eyes. But he had pulled back enough for her to break his nose with her forehead, which had in turn given her enough leverage to get up and break his neck between her knees.

Legs were always stronger than arms. She remembered teaching Phelps that move.

That bastard couldn’t run from her forever. She’d taken a leaf out of the Raymond Reddington playbook and made the FBI into her weapon, and unlike Reddington, she didn’t particularly care about who she hurt to get to Phelps. Keen. Whatever he wanted to call himself. Caring made you hesitate, and hesitation got you hurt or killed.

She needed the rest of the operatives the Director had hired, and out of all of them, Phelps was the most dangerous. He played his own game, and right now she couldn’t guess what it was. She knew Elizabeth Keen played into it, was perhaps the key ingredient. The Director was playing the odds of finding Elizabeth and Reddington; would it be the dispassionate logic of business, the consuming hatred of vengeance, or the possessiveness of a sociopathic obsession masquerading as love that would locate them?

See, Phelps had started to care, and that caring could be exploited. She could use him to get to Reddington, and then let Reddington deal with him. Win-win, as far as she was concerned.

But first, of course, she had to get to Phelps. Well, she needed Kimberly Douglas or Jennifer Reddington, or whatever the hell the girl wanted to call herself, and for that she needed Phelps.

She approached the door to the office, and kicked in the rickety wooden structure with a well-placed foot. It slammed open and Bill McCready’s head jerked up from his desk, shock written all over his face.

“Hello, Bud. Goodbye, Bud,” she said simply before putting a pair of matched bullets between his eyes.

That really should have felt a lot more satisfying.

Before Hannah could step forward to his file cabinet, she heard the click of a safety behind her. She smiled, and held up her hands, offering the man behind her the SIG Sauer and silencer she carried. “Hello, Jacob.”

“Hello, Nikki,” he replied, taking the gun. “I heard you’re looking for me.”

 *****************

 

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I *told* you there was a lot going on.


	9. Owen Richards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we start getting into the adult themes a little bit. ;)
> 
> Many thanks to the wonderful figure_of_dismay and deandratb for the beta!

Liz sipped at the divinely aromatic coffee and leaned her head back into the waiting hands of the stylist.

“Pretend you’re on vacation,” Vargas had told her. “You need to be relaxed. It’s like a trust fall. I won’t let anything happen to you, Elizabeth. You’re important to Raymond, and that means you’re important to me. In order to do this, we need to leave the hotel, and I realize that might be difficult for you right now. If you can’t relax, I need you to be really good at faking it.”

After the third or fourth turn through the complicated Paris streets, some of the tension started to leave her frame. Vargas had nodded at her in approval, and as they walked he gave her some pointers. Being relaxed was key, he said. When tense, it was difficult to spot the real threats among the imagined. Don’t be distracted but be loose. Let in your surroundings; hear, smell, taste the world around you. That way you know immediately when something has gone wrong.

Reddington had taught him that, he said. It had kept him alive in many a tricky situation. Liz couldn’t help but wonder if that had been her mother’s advice, one of the things drilled into Reddington’s head as he was pulled around Russia in her wake. She thought about Reddington’s demeanor, his easy and almost feline grace. He might be still and calm, but he was acutely aware of everything going on around him at all times. The world and everyone in it were like books to him, and he was constantly reading.

The biggest thing, Vargas pointed out, was to not act like a fugitive. After all, Red never did. He acknowledged that he was a criminal, according to the laws of several countries and a few international treaties, but he owned the world he moved in. He stood with confidence and never allowed fear or uneasiness to undermine him.

She realized, sitting in the little makeshift salon in the back of a flower shop with a strange Congolese woman’s hands massaging her scalp, that she had to own this world, too. This was, in some respects, her birthright. All her previous goals in life had been carved out of what she thought she should want. Liz had never looked at them too closely, examined her reasons too carefully, for fear that they’d disappear like the ephemeral illusions they were.

And they had. So now what did she want? Justice, of course, except now she was willing to step outside the law to get it. Her enemies owned the law, after all, and she was beginning to understand that law and justice weren’t always the same thing. She could never go back to her old life now, even if such a thing was ever possible.

Where did that leave her future? It was easy not to think too hard about it. Her life expectancy at this point couldn’t be particularly high, so why plan for days that might never come? Yet that thinking was flawed; she could have been hit by a bus or victim of some random health crisis at any time in the past thirty-odd years. She had still tried to plan for a future.

Dye was dabbed into her scalp and Vargas left her with a stack of French fashion magazines as he went to confer with the stylist on cut. She had decided to let Vargas have free rein, worried she might pull her disguise too conservative, too predictable, too… her. There was something appealing in being reborn from the ashes of her old self, and she was content to let it surprise her. She wondered if perhaps Vargas, as Reddington’s eyes by proxy, had a clearer vision of who she truly was than she did. Could he reflect that in her look? Would she see herself in the mirror when they were finished, and not a disguise?

She thumbed through the magazines without really looking at anything. A dream she had woken from months ago resurfaced in her mind, like it did occasionally when she felt troubled. Tom, trying to warn her about Reddington, Reddington dispatching him then slowly approaching her bed, asking her what she really wanted. She’d had so many subconscious fears about what Reddington had wanted from her, what Tom wanted from her, felt pulled in so many conflicting directions…

But what bubbled up to the surface time and again to torture her in idle moments was the completely visceral shock of arousal that had shaken her awake. At the time, she had dismissed it as simple biological necessity making itself known; she’d been going without sex for possibly the longest time she could remember. There had never been much downtime between her relationships before, and she’d never done casual one-nighters very well.

She’d been denying herself even manual release, troubled by the images that warred for dominance in her mind during those private moments. Finally, that physical frustration had worked its way into her dreams. She’d taken a cold shower and gone about her day, and it had been a hell of a day. Distracted by her anger and frustration with Reddington, she’d been able to push aside the unexpected echoing stabs of attraction and awareness that had surfaced as soon as she’d spied the familiar silhouette of that damn hat.

But there had been moments, at later times, when she hadn’t been able to deny herself the only source of pleasure and solace available to her, releasing her tension under the spray of a shower head, or with a pair of sleepy fingertips after a nightcap or three. She tried so carefully to keep her mind blank, to focus only on physical sensation, but when she came to her most shuddering of orgasms, there had always been a presence in her mind; a sense of expensive suits, Italian leather, subtle cologne, and a low, rough voice that purred her name.

Thinking about it now made her toes curl and her body tighten with an embarrassing level of arousal. There had been so many mental roadblocks she’d previously thrown in that path of thought: job, husband, age, distrust. They’d been swept away almost overnight, and the resulting flood of feeling had left her shaking in its wake.

He did care about her, far more than she had ever expected. She had become his lifeline, in a way, and now he was hers. What did she want? She wanted him. She wanted his voice in her ear, his fingers on her body, the rough skin of his scars under her palms. She wanted to know what he sounded like in the throes of passion, wanted to taste that cognac she drank last night mingled with herself on his tongue. She wanted to know what he would taste like in her mouth, what she could do to make him let go and feel again, even for a moment. She wanted to give him peace, warmth, shelter...oh, hell, she was in trouble. How could this have happened so quickly? 

Or had it always been there, simply waiting to be acknowledged?

Like the fairytale, she had fallen for the monster, but underneath the mud and blood there was no prince, simply a man who was fractured and complicated.

Loving Reddington wouldn’t solve any problems. It wouldn’t make her life better, give her all the things she had once wanted. But it wasn’t something she could help feeling. It wasn’t a choice. He was the other half of her soul, the presence that she had always sensed at the edges of her life, the hand she had always sought in the darkness. The years between them, the passage of time and events that separated their lives didn’t matter as much as the path they were on now.

The stylist and Vargas re-entered, the forty minutes of dye up. She tipped her head back into the sink again and let the stylist work her magic. As the water rinsed away the excess dye, Liz thought about the cycle of saving that she and Reddington were locked into; pulling each other out of danger time and again. She couldn’t excuse it as wanting answers any longer. She had saved him for his own sake; had put her life at risk to pull him out of a horrendous prison, to go back for him when she couldn’t leave him behind, to walk into the den of lions and negotiate a deal for his life.

She had killed a man and gone on the run because it was the only thing she could do to protect him. Tom Connolly hadn’t been about preserving her source of answers; she had already decided she no longer wanted to know. She shot Tom Connolly because he threatened to kill the one thing she would kill to protect: Reddington.

And that was her future. She would travel this road as long as she could, love him as much as he would let her, and she would keep Raymond Reddington alive as long as she had the strength in her body to fight. Scissors snipped through her hair, cutting off pieces of her former life and leaving them on the floor, much as she had tried to do earlier that year. She hadn’t known then, not really, who she was at heart; her secret soul hidden in denial and half-forgotten.

She was a survivor, a fighter, a sometimes champion of justice, and a sometimes thief. She was a woman who would use whatever she had to, do whatever she must, to end this war. They had tried to take her down, failed, and now she had taken one of theirs instead. This was her world now.

She was determined to thrive.

*****************************

“Put the gun down, Jacob, I’m not here to hurt you.” She could practically feel his eyes slide off the back of her head to the bloody mess on the desk. “Bud was a different story. He was long past his expiration date, and I just helped both of us out here. He had a tail on you. It wasn’t a very effective tail, mind you, but you did something to piss him off.”

“I always pissed him off.” The slip of metal on leather as the gun slid into a shoulder holster. Her own gun was slid from her hands, along with the service Glock at her hip. She turned around.

“You look like a cop with that thing on.” She gestured toward the holster he wore.

“It’s more practical than sticking it in my waistband. You look like a Fed.” He took in her suit, hairstyle, and shoes. “Clever. You’re working with them to track down your next victim.”

“‘Victim’ isn’t the word I’d use to describe Elizabeth Keen,” she said, noting the way his jaw twitched at her name, “but then you know her better than I do. Don’t you?” She moved past him to get out of the small office. It was starting to stink.

Phelps followed her. “I’m not going to help you find her.”

“Even if it means getting her away from Reddington?” Hannah reached into her pocket, and Phelps raised her gun against her. She gave him a look and fished out her cell phone. “I’m calling my cleaner. Do you mind?”

He lowered the gun, but his stance was still full of tension. The last time they’d seen each other she’d beaten him to within an inch of his life; his wariness was probably justified. “Liz is a big girl, she can make her own choices,” he said.

“And boy, that just bugs the shit out of you, doesn’t it?” Hannah sat on the edge of the boxing ring and leaned back against the ropes. Mr. Kaplan’s contact picked up on the other end of the line, and Hannah fed him their address. She ended the call and tucked the phone back into her pocket. “She chose Reddington over you.”

“She chose answers,” he clarified. “Reddington’s been baiting her with answers about her past, dropping only hints here and there to keep her on a tight leash.”

She smiled at him. “But when push came to shove, when she had to flee for her life, it was Reddington she trusted to keep her safe, wasn’t it? She didn’t run away with you on that sweet little boat. She didn’t even call you, did she? I wonder if she even thought about you at all in that desperate moment. It was Reddington she reached out to.”

She could see the hard line of anger in his eyes, but he shook his head. “What terrible and incriminating thing are you trying to gall me into confessing?”

The door opened and Jacob spun around, his hand snapping up with her gun at the ready. Mr. Kaplan’s familiar and business-like silhouette stepped into view. “I can see you’re going to keep me busy,” Kaplan said with a brisk clip to her voice.

Hannah hadn’t moved from the edge of the boxing ring. She shrugged, kicking back against the ring apron with her heel. “I’m not usually this prolific, but you know how it is when one has loose ends to tie up. Jacob, put the gun down and let Mr. Kaplan do her job.”

“She works for Reddington, Nikki.”

“It’s Hannah. I haven’t used Nikola Markova in about ten years. Not since you burned me by letting information slip to Gina Zanetakos.” Hannah shook her head. “Your dick just can’t keep out of trouble, I swear to God. And, yes, of course she works for Reddington. If I only picked associates who had no connection to anyone else, I’d be out of business.”

Jacob glanced at her, but didn’t lower the gun. “What the hell game are you playing?”

“The only one I know how to. Gun, Jacob.” He lowered it. She gestured back to the office with her head. “One in there, one back out by the stairwell. I believe the owner of the property has a nice little insurance policy. I made sure there was a fire clause in it.”

“Understood,” Mr. Kaplan said in the same unperturbed tone. “It’ll be extra for the accelerant.”

“The account I gave you is still good.”

Kaplan disappeared into the little office room. Hannah heard the snap of latex gloves and affected a shiver. “How do you think she got into this line of work?” Hannah asked in a low voice. “Do you just wake up one morning and decide to do it? Did she do crime scene clean up and figured out there could be more money on the other side?” She widened her eyes and turned back to Phelps with a mock-shocked expression. “Ooo, do you think she killed someone and had to cover it up and then never got caught?”

“Enough, Nikki.”

“Hannah.”

“Whatever. What do you want?”

“A nice, snug cabin in the North Woods of Maine where I can watch moose and black bears from my front porch.” She smiled again. “But you want to know what I need from you. Names. I want names.”

Phelps crossed his arms and shifted from one foot to the other. “What names?”

“I want to know who else the Director hired to track down Raymond Reddington and Elizabeth Keen.”

He gave her a tight smile. “How would I know that?”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “Because right now you’re the biggest name in the game apart from myself and the aforementioned Reddington. You’ve taken on Berlin’s evacuated business interests, but then that’s not that hard… you’d already been doing that for years, hadn’t you? Minding his stateside interests while also mining Elizabeth Keen for any information about her connection to Reddington. I admit, it’s impressive. Wooing and winning the girl while popping up to Boston to take care of that little leak that could have destroyed Berlin. You turned an assassination into a romantic weekend getaway. That takes _skill_.”

His face was a mask, but she could see the indignation flash in his eyes. She’d scored a good hit there, but she wasn’t done yet. “My favorite part,” she added, “is where you also managed to score a night with your former lover Gina in there, too. Tell me, does it cost you any sleep, playing so many sides at one time? Or is that how you get off, the danger?” She allowed her smile to spread wider, slowly, suggestively. “Was Liz that boring in bed that you needed your little Greek powder keg? Poor Jacob. Did I ruin you for nice girls?”

Jacob looked away quickly, then rubbed at his jaw in that way he did when he was irritated and off-balance. “Get to the point, _Hannah_.”

“I know you were approached. Did you agree to track down your ex-wife for money, Jacob?”

He laughed hollowly and shook his head. “Unbelievable. I’m the one with the guns, and you’re still trying to interrogate me.”

“Where did you take Jennifer Reddington?”

That threw him. He stared at her. “What?”

Hannah leaned back against the ropes, propping her arms against that familiar feel of steel cable wrapped in electrical tape. “You were the one who told Berlin about Reddington’s family in the first place. You traced them through Elizabeth’s adopted father, Sam Milhoan. Milhoan had contact with Carla Reddington after she moved into protective custody. You could trace her that far, but not further, and the daughter had disappeared, which is why Berlin hired Lord Baltimore. Baltimore was able to trace the wife, but hadn’t completed the trace on the daughter. You finished that up when you took over Berlin’s remnants. Good information to have on hand, I’m sure. That’s what kept you alive when you refused to track down Elizabeth; you offered up Reddington’s daughter in exchange.”

He stared at her for a long minute, maybe trying to intimidate her, though why he would bother trying was beyond her.

“Jacob,” she said quietly, “you’ve seen what I can do, but I promise, that isn’t even a fraction of the viciousness and violence I am capable of dealing. If I wanted you dead, I could have killed you any time in the last twenty minutes. I can kill you now, and live to walk, simply add another body to Mr. Kaplan’s bill. You’re not fast enough to live, if I decide to kill you, even with both my guns and yours. Answer me.”

“I don’t know where she is. All I gave was a name.”

Hannah smiled again, this time without humor. “And that certainly absolves you of any guilt over what happens to her. I’m sure it will protect you from Reddington’s wrath.”

“I’m not afraid of Reddington.”

“You should be.” She shook her head. “I was wrong; it’s not your lust that gets you into trouble, Jacob, it’s your hubris. The only reason Reddington has left you alive is because of Elizabeth, but what happens to you when she decides you mean nothing to her? How long do you think you can string her emotions along to protect you?”

He took a step closer and leaned his head forward incredulously. “Are you offering me protection from Reddington?”

“In exchange for the names of the other assets hired by the Director and the location of Jennifer Reddington, yes.” She offered him another shrug, which of course slid the knife sheath she kept on her shoulder further down her sleeve and closer to hand. Taking chances was not her business. If Phelps wouldn’t play ball, Mr. Kaplan could earn a bonus.

Phelps rocked back on his heels. “What made you think it was me?”

Of course, he couldn’t simply tell her. Jacob and his damnable games. “How many sociopathic, deadly ex-lovers does Elizabeth Keen have?”

He raised his eyebrows. “And she’s the only one with lovers who have an axe to grind?”

“Ah, shit,” she swore. “Madeline Pratt.”

“She got the younger of the two King brothers out of jail. He might be a twit, but he has extensive connections.”

“And he’s holding Jennifer Reddington in one of the King holdings that wasn’t on the record. Damn. Who else?”

“Johannesburg.”

Hannah grimaced. “Solomon. Hell, that’s bad. We have history, and not the fun, sexy kind.”

Phelps snorted. “Is it ever the fun, sexy kind with you?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘fun.’” She slid off the boxing ring and stretched, stifling a yawn for effect. “All right, get out of here. I’ll reach out if I need you again.”

“I’m not going to let you kill her.”

“Leave my guns at the entrance if you don't trust me enough to leave them here. I’ll get them on my way out. I need to discuss terms with Mr. Kaplan if I’m going to keep you alive.”

He didn’t budge. “Nikki, Hannah, whatever you want to be called today, listen to me. I am not,” he enunciated slowly, “going to let you harm so much as a hair on Liz’s head.”

“The knight errant act is quite affecting, Jacob, but you listen to _me_. Whatever happens to Elizabeth Keen is a product of her own doing. I don’t wish her harm, more than I wish anyone who’s never crossed me harm. I’m not sadistic. But someone will find her, will get to her. Even Reddington can’t protect her from that forever. She’s put herself out into the world and made enemies of the people he’s been running from for decades. You can either help me, and maybe have a chance of saving her life, or you can let Pratt or Solomon get to her first. I’m sure they’ll be gentle and caring.”

He exhaled and shook his head again, slowly this time. “So tell me, does it get you off, playing all the sides like this?”

“If you don’t believe another word I say, Jacob Phelps, believe this: you cannot possibly understand a single thing about me or what side I’m playing. When I was eight years old, I chose a path with a single bullet, and I have _never_ wavered. I never will. Do not place yourself against me; I will cut you down without a moment’s thought.”

_You can’t hesitate; hesitation will kill or hurt you. If you ever have to pull the trigger, sweetheart, you’re going to have to run. Run as far as you can, as fast as you can, and don’t you ever look back. Not for a second._

_How will you find me?_

_You can’t let that stop you. Just keep running. Promise me._

_I promise._

Phelps put her guns on the floor and turned on his heel. She waited until his footsteps faded from earshot, then turned around to face Mr. Kaplan emerging from the office. “What game _are_ you playing, Persephone?”

“The only one I know, as I said. Survival. You got all that?” she gestured to where Phelps had stood. “I want to make sure it gets back to him.”

“Why?”

“The simple answer is that I can’t do anything about Solomon, not yet, but I can find Jennifer and protect Carla. Reddington might have made her disappear, but he’s too sentimental; he left her with a weak link. That husband of hers has a family and a lover, and Reddington’s reputation took a blow when he was shot. Jacob Phelps, or Tom Keen, whichever you prefer, turned all of Berlin’s information over to the Alliance. They have Jennifer, and it’s only a matter of time before they have Carla. They’ll get to her through the husband.”

“That’s not what I’m asking, dear.”

“I know.” Hannah holstered her Glock at her hip and slid the Sig Sauer into its shoulder holster once she spun off the silencer. “The other question is complicated and has many layers of answers. For the time being, let’s go with practicality. I’m a huge fan of it. I run a tight, lucrative business which no doubt your employer knows all about; I’m sure he conducts due diligence when providing shipping access to any new organizations. No one has the Gulf to Gulf routes or the Mediterranean sewn up like Reddington; I have no other choice but to go through him if I want to transport efficiently. This isn’t news.”

“Yet you’ve operated for years through Alan Fitch and his little band of merry men,” Mr. Kaplan filled in. “Am I to understand you don’t like the new management?”

Hannah gave the woman a small, dangerous smile. “No one manages me, Mr. Kaplan. The Alliance is failing; blood is in the water and the sharks are circling. The Director pushed things too far, too fast, and too soon.”

“And you’re getting out while you can?”

“Something like that.”

Mr. Kaplan considered this for a long moment before replying. “I can’t speak for him, you understand, but as for me...I don’t trust you.”

“Good,” she agreed. “You shouldn’t.”

“I’m not going to let you hold his wife and daughter as hostages to exchange for Elizabeth Keen.”

Hannah shook her head. “Mr. Kaplan, if it were that easy, I’d already have her by now.” She pulled out her cell phone. “Thank you again for your services. You’re worth every penny.”

The other end picked up. “Agent Ressler.”

“Ressler, I have a lead on Kimberly Douglas.”

************************

Red stopped on the threshold of the connecting door, which stood open. “You went darker. I was expecting blonde.”

The cut was shorter, more angular, but softer than the style she’d been wearing for the past few months. It wasn’t the longer hair that he had itched to run his fingers through, with the sweeping fringe that fell over her eyes, but it was lovely. Very French, and very chic. Vargas knew his business. It framed and altered her face, along with some eyebrow-shaping and what Vargas termed “a little polish.”

She turned toward him and his eyes wandered downward. He was curious to see which dress she had chosen from the selection offered. The green. He would not have guessed the green. He had his money on the black lace, as it offered a little more understated grace. This emerald green silk was made for statement and seduction, its folds falling in a gracefully low neckline and even lower back, before skimming closely along the hips and flaring outward in multiple sections. It revealed a long, bare, smooth leg ending in a delicate foot encased in expensive pumps. The whole ensemble simply breathed money and high-class taste.

“Wow,” was about all he could manage. She stepped forward and took his wrist in her hands, fastening the cufflink he had completely forgotten about.

“You’ve said that before,” she replied, amused. “This time I believe you.”

This time, he reflected, she really was a criminal. He tried not to dwell on that. The guilt would slow him down, and he needed his wits tonight. He needed her wits, as well. Besides, if he tried to lock her in her hotel room to keep her safe, she’d only break out and find trouble on her own. It was far better to keep her beside him, where he could see her.

And she had proved herself capable, time and again. He trusted her to have his back, implicitly. That trust was rare in his life.

He cocked his head, studying the line of her dress. “One moment,” he said, darting back into the other room to exchange cases. He’d brought in the pearls, meant to pair with the black dress, but the green...the green needed something else entirely.

She hadn’t moved except to pour herself a small measure of that excellent cognac. As her head tilted back to take in a draw of the liquor, he had ample opportunity to admire the smooth skin that stretched from her neck to between her breasts. The emerald silk clung to her in the most enticing way imaginable. He inwardly applauded her choice at the same time he cursed Vargas for selecting it in the first place.

She smiled at him over the rim of her glass and it awakened every single nerve, even in parts of himself he thought long dead to feeling. Red held out the jewelry case, and she handed him her glass in exchange. He downed the rest of the cognac it held in one swallow, trying not to think of her lips and tongue on the rim of the same glass.

“Wow,” she said softly, echoing his former statement.

“Well,” he explained, “you are a jewel thief. Tonight, anyway. That’s your cover. Richards has a type: expensive, seductive, playful, and usually quite dangerous.”

“So our British spy is looking for a Bond Girl?” Lizzy pulled the necklace from its velvet cushion, admiring it as it shone from her fingers. A collar of twisted, golden snakes formed a complicated knot, with three glittering opals that flashed blue and green in the low lamp light. “Are these emeralds?” she pointed to the small green gemstones that surrounded the largest, center opal.

“Green diamonds. Very rare. Allow me,” he said, setting down the crystal tumbler and taking the necklace from her hesitant fingers. “There’s a small pair of green diamond studs made up to go with it; more modern of course, but a lovely little touch. The necklace itself dates from around 1900 or so, whenever it was the Art Nouveau movement reached its zenith. I find the aesthetic on the whole rather too fussy, but it did result in some beautiful pieces of jewelry, if somewhat overstated. Now, turn around, Medusa.”

She took a small step forward instead and raised her chin, allowing him access to her neck. It was a dare, nearly, and while he should have merely walked around her to fasten the necklace, he found himself rising to her bait. The soft, coal black curls accentuated those blue eyes of hers. They were the color of the Gulf of Maine on a winter morning, when the sea smoke rose up in wisps from the ocean’s surface and caressed the soft morning light. They were eyes a man could drown himself quite happily inside, and not even once wish for air.

She closed her eyes and gave a soft little gasp as the cold metal necklace settled across her neck and chest. He fastened the closure with expert skill, but skimmed his fingers along the edge of the necklace where it met her skin before dropping his hands. His palm fairly itched to touch the small slice of her stomach that was visible through the plummeting neckline of the dress. He wanted to skim his fingers over her skin, to feel her inhale and exhale, then run his hand up beneath the silk to cup one of those perfectly-shaped breasts. Would it fit in his hand as easily as he dreamed?

Red refrained from doing so, of course, but that didn’t stop him from wondering whether she would allow it, welcome it, and enjoy it. Could he bring her to the peak of sublime pleasure, and if he could, what would those eyes look like as they clouded with passion and desire? Her eyelids lowered fractionally, and the tip of her tongue darted out to lick at lips that had gone dry. It had an intensely erotic effect upon his senses, the little pink tip of her tongue and the moisture on her bottom lip. He desperately wanted to taste it.

They stood as close as they had the morning she had kissed him, but this was a world away from that time. What had passed between them then was sweet and honest. This was both primal and complicated, the layered dance of male and female. Mating ritual dressed up in sophisticated layers of seduction and passion. He so rarely allowed himself to acknowledge the sheer physicality of his attraction to her. Those passions ran deep inside of him, the more so for having gone so long with only the most sparing of human contact.

Warning sirens sounded in the back of his mind, and he tried to summon a mental picture of the child she had been, or her smiling in a photograph with Tom, her seemingly constant and sometimes justified anger with him - something, any obstacle he could throw in the path of his growing ardor. But his world was silk satin, smooth skin, and sparkling eyes that held him captive. He would throw his entire life out the window if it meant that he could hold this woman in his arms tonight, the way he yearned to.

His hands were already on her hips, ready to pull her close, when a knock sounded at the door and shattered the spell. Red looked away, muttered something about needing his jacket, then escaped to the other room. His room. He shut the connecting door behind him for a moment, simply to gain some distance.

That had been far too dangerous, and he spent the time hunting for the jacket to his tux chastising himself repeatedly. He shrugged on the jacket, fastened the buttons, and ran a hand over his face as he struggled for control over his body. Many interrogations over the years had left him with a valuable mental toolbox for dealing with physical reflexes, but there was very little defense against the heart.

Thankfully, what little defense he had was effective. All he had to do was remember everything he had taken from her and how very easy it was to shatter her faith in him; she knew what dark-hearted monster lurked under his smooth, expensive exterior.

When he reentered her room, she stood near the open door draped in a silk and fur cape, talking with Vargas. The cape had also been Vargas’s choice, and Red wasn’t sure if he wanted to pay the man a bonus or throttle him. For a moment, before he wrangled his thoughts back into order, all he could think about was how that fur would look against Liz’s bare skin. “The earrings,” he said, passing her a smaller case. “You can put them on in the car while we brief you on Richards. Shall we?”

**********************

The venue was glittering and opulent, everything Liz would have expected from Paris. At one point, Red explained, it had been a high-end brothel, competing with the Paris Opera House for ostentatious display of charms both architectural and fleshly. When she asked him in a playful tone if he’d ever visited it in its heyday, he shot her a pained look and complained that he wasn’t that old.

He’d disappeared soon after that, ostensibly to hunt down champagne, but Liz felt she might have struck a raw nerve accidentally. She didn’t think what had nearly happened in the hotel was entirely her imagination. She had felt his hands on her hips, watched his eyes follow her tongue, and felt his breath on her cheek quicken in anticipation.

The desire those small gestures awakened inside of her was more intense than anything she had ever felt in her life. It felt so overwhelming that for a moment, she felt sure every pair of eyes in the place could see her taut nipples and knew the damp ache that tortured her with every step. She either had to get herself under control or slip away to a private restroom for a moment to take care of things, simply so she could manage a coherent thought. Rampaging hormones were not what she needed to deal with at the moment. Red was counting on her, and she couldn’t afford to be so distracted by something as base as lust.

The second option was seeming more likely, until she spotted his concerned face in the crowd. He wasn’t looking at her, but she knew that iron mask that had descended, that clenching jaw and twitch in the cheek. He sensed something wrong, and the thought of danger directed at him had much the same effect as a bucket full of ice water. She followed his gaze and froze.

What the hell was Madeline Pratt doing here? Liz eyed the woman as she smiled that socialite smile and sipped delicately at some blue cocktail. Her gaze shifted back to Red, who met her eyes and placed the second champagne flute he held back on the tray in the corner. His look told her that they had to split up, that she couldn’t been seen with him.

She certainly didn’t trust Pratt, who had gotten the upper hand in each of their two encounters, but Red had dealt with the woman for far longer. He could hold his own for a while, at least, but she would have to keep an eye out. Liz nodded slightly and settled her own features into a mask of indifference and boredom, turning away from Red and setting into the crowd.

Luxury and expense surrounded her, and it reminded her forcibly of the last time she had been in such a room. That had been an illicit auction, not an arts-fundraiser turned black market connections gathering, but the atmosphere was much the same. It was a building filled with very rich, very dangerous people. She had to focus on locating Richards. The sooner she had him, the sooner she and Red could get out of this place.

Except this place was now her world, too. Own it, she thought. She had to own it.

She smiled at a young Spanish man who was far too fascinated with her cleavage, and relieved him of his nearly full champagne flute. She tossed the drink back and gave him an empty glass, winking as she slipped back into the crowd. Pretending to be Catwoman for an evening ought to be fun, at least, though she found it unnerving to be without a weapon.

No gun, no badge, no backup.

_You have me, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you._

She thought about what she’d been briefed on regarding Richards in the car. Age approximated at sixty-two, British, upper-class connections. Reputed to be suave, manipulative, and highly intelligent. He was also reputed to have an interest in beautiful, dangerous women. Reddington said the man had tried for years to get close to a woman of his acquaintance who fit that bill. Now, in retrospect, Liz could easily guess the identity of the woman. So what game was Madeline Pratt playing?

Something about the Richards file had bothered her in the car, but she couldn’t quite place it. Some familiarity or parallel had brought the memory of a certain clove-heavy cologne and a deep unease. Ressler had told her once not to fight and try to hold on to those flashes of inspiration, but to simply wait. Eventually, he said, the picture would emerge in her mind, but if she kept trying to fight her subconscious, it simply wouldn't work.

He had been chastising her, gently for a change, for her frustration at having to go back to Reddington for pieces of information, for guidance. Ressler had told her to trust herself more, that she had good instincts. Ever the master of the accidental backhanded compliment. She missed his blunt honesty.

But the Liz Keen he had complimented and held in esteem, that Liz had already started to fracture and disappear under the weight of her own anger. The closer she came to the truth, the harder she fought against it. Those walls built in childhood packed a hell of a punch.

Liz concentrated on the snippets of conversation heard here and there. A couple of times when she spotted an easy mark, she did a brush pass and picked up a watch or bracelet. One woman’s heavy diamond teardrop earrings made a memorable clatter into a wine glass. Liz made a show of pretending to help look for the other, which was safely tucked into the small garter band she wore around her thigh for just that purpose.

Well, she’d intended to palm a knife at some point during the evening and had nowhere else to stow it, but this worked better for her cover. Though, she had to admit, leaving the earring with the man she suspected Teardrop was having an affair with was remarkably hilarious and an excellent distraction when Pratt’s path drifted too close to hers.

She made sure to never turn her face in Pratt’s direction. Her silhouette was different, the hair and the look. As long as she gave the woman no reasons to be suspicious of her, Pratt could continue searching faces and never find hers. Once or twice she allowed her path to cross Red’s, but neither acknowledged the other, not really. Not until the third time they got close.

Red made a show of eyeing Liz's gown with the subtly lecherous glance of a connoisseur as he grabbed her wrist. He pulled her hand from his pocket and plucked his silver card case out of her fingers. She twisted her hand free with a wink, stepping lightly on his toes to distract his gaze, then slipped behind him in the shelter of an improbably large potted fern.

It had all been in character. If she watched anyone at the party, Pratt would be watching Red, and she knew most, if not all, of his tells. That little show must have been for the benefit of Richards, as Red had been the one to maneuver himself closer. Liz spotted the broad shoulders and tall frame she’d been looking for, and watched as he disappeared down a narrow hallway.

There had been a few whispers here and there of a more… private exhibition elsewhere in the building. People with wealth and power were so very often drawn deeply to displays of that wealth and power through sexuality. There was a devil-may-care attitude that overtook morality at a certain level of society. Modern day Hellfire Clubs.

Liz froze for a moment as that tickled another memory, somehow connected to the cologne and the unease. It wasn’t a direct memory; not something that had happened to her. Something she read? But then where had she smelled that cologne? She turned to one of the refreshment tables, where a smiling waiter poured her a seltzer on request.

The fragment of memory faded, and she returned the glass to the waiter before heading for that inconspicuous little hallway. As she entered, her nose twitched. That cologne that was not a memory. Cloves, spice, something warm...bay rum, maybe. She could smell it in the hallway.

She could also smell the heavy musk of sex. Moans were coming from behind a few of the heavy wooden doors. The red and gold plush carpet muted her footfalls and she studied the doors. There were little brass coverings for the peepholes in the middle of each one. The coverings had latches, but they all stood open. She supposed people used to pay to watch, but tonight the viewings were free.

Had her mark disappeared into one of these? There was one way to find out. She peeped into numerous doors, feeling a little furtive and dirty rather than turned on. Her cop’s eye hadn’t left, and she found herself eyeing the participants to make sure none seemed coerced.

One of the doors was cracked, and she pressed herself against the wall to see if she could overhear anything useful. She recognized the voice immediately and knew the door had been left open for her. “...no interest in such a prurient display, Madeline. I wouldn’t have pegged you for it, either, but I suppose no one really knows the real you, do they? Delightful tricks with ties and belts aside.”

“This is where I say something witty about pots and kettles, no doubt.” There was the sound of shifting fabric and a heavy glass being set down on wood. “You had your chance to know me, Ray,” was added more softly.

His voice was gravelled, as though the words were pulled from him reluctantly. “That assumes I wanted to, Maddy.”

There was a soft intake of breath, and even Liz winced at the coldness of the statement. “You’re a son of a bitch, you know that?” Pratt countered.

“I am many things, but very few of them have anything to do with my mother. You misunderstand me.” More rustling fabric, the sound of someone sitting on the edge of a bed. “You were correct a moment ago about pots and kettles. You don’t know me. No one does; I’ve made sure of that. That’s part of how I survive. What you think you know, the side of me you believe loves you, is a phantom. You deserve more than a phantom who can never get close to you because he’s incapable of trust.”

Liz felt her heart clench. Were those words meant for Madeline Pratt, or for her? Liz pulled in a breath as softly and soundlessly as she could, but she could still feel tears stinging the corner of her eyes. She couldn’t stay and listen to this, she had to find Richards.

As quietly as she could, she turned away from the door and continued down the hall. Or at least, she tried to, but a moment later she found herself unable to breath as her heavy gold necklace was pulled tightly against her throat and a gloved hand snaked around her mouth.

That cologne! Suddenly the memory burst in front of her mind’s eye as her actual vision darkened for lack of oxygen. Her internship in grad school, the stark white forensic laboratory, evidence bags. The rustle of plastic and the fabric samples. _You can still smell the cologne,_ the lab tech said. _We know the brand, but that doesn’t help us narrow anything down, lots of men use it._

Bruised throats, arms, torsos with rope burns; a parade of dead women.

She tried to suck in enough air to call out for Reddington, but she was already on the floor, nearly unconscious. The struggle was mostly in her mind as she willed her body to lash out. Reddington wouldn’t know what had happened to her; he had no idea who Owen Richards really was. Why would he? Serial killers were boring, even one that had never been caught, the one they had jokingly called the Phantom. A phantom incapable of trust…

If she hadn’t blacked out, she might have laughed at the irony.

 

*************************

 

TBC

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hate me for the cliff hanger. The next chapter is underway and will probably be up sometime next week.


	10. Madeline Pratt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: there's a bit of Liz whump in this chapter. It's probably fair to assume from this point onward that there's some whump in store for everyone. Just everyone.
> 
> I tried to treat this as well as I could, balancing the very real threat to Liz against gratuitous violence for the sake of violence. Hopefully, it reads well and isn't too unsettling, but there should probably be a trigger warning just to be safe. 
> 
> As always, special thanks to figure_of_dismay and deandratb for the beta-work.

Ressler hung up the phone and sat down, rubbing a hand over his face. When a knock sounded at his office door, he looked up. Hannah Ferris walked in and closed the door behind her. She handed him a stack of satellite scans. “Aram thinks he’s found the most likely spot, based on some tracing Samar did with the Kings’ former holdings.”

He raised his eyebrows. “On a first name basis with everyone already, are you?”

“Not you, Agent Ressler,” she countered, sitting down. “What’s more important right now, your distrust of me, or the life of Kimberly Douglas? Jennifer Reddington. Whichever you’d like to call her.”

There were a million things he could have said in response, but none of them would have been wise. He held his tongue. _You open your mouth, Donald, and hay flies out._

“The place is a fortress,” Ferris continued, pointing to the satellite scans. “We’re at a bit of an impasse here.”

“I can call in a tactical team,” Ressler pointed out, “We have the go for operational funding when we need it.”

She sat back in the chair and crossed her legs. “And how long, exactly, do you think it’s going to take for word to get to Francis King that we’re on to him?”

Ressler paused at that. “What makes you think someone would tip him off?”

Ferris stared at him for a long moment before answering, as though weighing what to say. “My contact believes King was sprung from prison by Madeline Pratt, who still has an axe to grind with Raymond Reddington. She may be using Jennifer as a way to get to him. The thing with Madeline Pratt, though,” she continued, “is that a woman like her doesn’t just up and take revenge one day. She waits. She plans. She takes advantage of opportunities presented to her and then strikes at the very moment the iron is at its hottest. If she’s going after Reddington now, she has a reason beyond petty revenge or retaliation.”

“And that reason is…?” Ferris simply raised her eyebrows, her look directing him to figure it out. “Liz,” he said. Of course, it was blindingly obvious, wasn’t it?

“There are lots of bounties out on Raymond Reddington, legal and otherwise. Now there are bounties out on Elizabeth Keen, too, and I guarantee you that the force behind Tom Connolly has put out the biggest.” She frowned. “It’s not her usual thing, bounty hunting. It’s too dirty. I wonder what was offered to her beyond money?”

“How do you know so much about Madeline Pratt?”

She shrugged slightly. “My work here is criminal profiling. I know a lot about people I don’t know at all. That’s kind of how the whole profiling thing works.”

“Fair enough,” he admitted, picking up the scans. “So how the hell do we get in here? Cooper had a team he trusted; I can maybe get them on this if I move quickly.”

Ferris sat forward. “I might have an alternative, but you’re going to hate it because it’s extremely illegal and outside the scope of any operational parameters.”

She had him pegged, didn’t she? “On the record, the answer is no. Off? I’m listening.”

“I know some guys.”

*****************************

Madeline stood in front of him, looking down at his face as he leaned his head back to look at her. She hadn’t taken a seat, hadn’t eased into that familiar languid grace, nor had she flashed him one single Cheshire Cat grin. It was rare to see her upset; her armor was nearly as thick as his.

She was a magnificent woman, and he had wanted to love her for a time. He had wished he could feel something for her beyond intrigue and arousal, but he had accepted the death of that part of himself a long time ago. He didn’t trust her, couldn’t trust her. Honestly, during most of their tempestuous affairs, he had much preferred it that way. It was easier.

Red was never really sure what he was to her. Did she love him, as she clearly thought she did? Or was he simply the shiniest bauble to be collected? Her climaxes had always felt less intimately bonding and more the _coup de grâce._ But then, she always had loved bloodsports.

“Madeline…” he began, but then trailed off as a muffled sound reached his ears.

He was on his feet in a split second, pistol in hand, ignoring Madeline’s startled question of how he’d gotten it past security. He eased the door open with his toe and swept the hallway in both directions. There was no one there.

“What’s that?” Madeline’s voice asked behind him, and he turned around to see what she meant. His breath caught for a moment as the low light from the brass wall lamps sparkled on a heap of glittering gold.

He was in front of it in two strides, picking it up and feeling its weight in his hands with an even heavier feeling in his heart. “Lizzy,” he breathed, almost involuntarily.

Without so much as a glance at Madeline behind him, Red practically ran to the other end of the hall where he wrenched open the door to the old servants’ stairs. He flew down them, barely registering the click of her heels in his wake. She called his name, but he ignored her.

Off the kitchen, in the former butler’s pantry, they’d set up the security headquarters. He knew exactly where it was because he’d put it there. Security was on his payroll, after all. It usually was for this type of event. Everyone knew Raymond Reddington took no chances with his safety.

He nearly ran into Eric Marsten, the burly head of security, whose tux jacket was removed and his shirt covered in blood. Red’s heart stopped beating for a moment, until he registered the man on the floor. “Reynolds?” he asked in a clip.

“Gone,” Marsten said, his normally lilting Danish voice now rough and angry. “Viktor took a shot, and your man, the little one, he was knocked out. I’m pulling tape now.”

Part of him wanted to shout at the man, to demand answers and accountability, but Marsten’s team was one of the best in the business. Red had a high respect for Eric and his men, as much as he did for his own close associates. He ducked out of the office and entered another little pantry room where the two injured men were being treated.

Vargas was conscious, but pale, squeezing his eyes shut as he held a wad of medical gauze to the side of his head. His clothes and hair were wet; he must have been outside in the rain. He had his chair turned at such an angle that he didn’t have to see the man with the bullet wound on his shoulder being treated. Red knelt in front of him, placed his hand on his knee. “Edmund?”

“I’m sorry, Raymond. I know she’s important to you, and I-”

“Hush,” he admonished. “None of that, now. Just tell me what you saw.” He took the bandage from Vargas’s hands and applied pressure to his injury, sliding over the cart of medical supplies so he could share it with the medic. Not that he didn’t trust Marsten’s medic, but Red had more experience with Vargas and his sensibilities.

“I’m glad I insisted on the green dress,” Vargas said, leaning his head to the side to allow Red better access. “It made her easier to follow. I saw her being pushed out of the window in the alley, the one that opens out onto that sloped florist’s roof. Just shoved out like a sack of potatoes. Her hands were tied behind her and her mouth was taped, but she was awake enough to slow her descent on the tin roof with her bare feet. She made a hell of a racket.”

The sound he’d heard, that must have been Lizzy on the roof. He winced, imagining the terror of sliding down a wet, cold metal surface towards the unforgiving cobblestones and not being able to stop yourself. He busied himself with placing fresh gauze along the gash with one hand and cleaning up the blood with the other. The less of it Vargas had to see, the better.

After a pause for a sip of water, Vargas continued his tale, eyes still closed. “I was in the café across the street, where I had the best vantage point, and I came out when I saw her tumble to the ground. I radioed Marsten. I had her, Raymond. She was dinged up pretty badly, but nothing seemed broken and she could stand, though she seemed to limp a little on her left. I tore the tape off her mouth, and she tried to warn me but the guy was already behind me.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Tall. Broad-shouldered, dark trench coat over a tux. Short, curly hair, and a melodious tenor voice. British.” Vargas inhaled sharply at the same time the realization struck Red. “Richards.”

“Owen Richards,” Red confirmed. “It would seem our ex-operative is still active.”

“I don’t know which way they went. I was still woozy when Marsten brought me in here.” Vargas’s voice was soft, ashamed.

Red finished his work, taped the gauze in place, and squeezed Vargas’s shoulder gently. “None of that, Edmund. You did everything you were capable of doing. Now I know she’s alive, and I know who has her.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Get her back,” he said simply.

Red left the rest of Vargas’s care to the medic and headed back out into the small hallway, where he nearly ran into Madeline. She grabbed his arm as he tried to pass by her. “Stop, Raymond.”

He clasped her wrist and pulled his arm free of her hand. “Not now, Madeline.”

“This is about the girl, isn’t it? That FBI agent you tried to pass off as a thief, the one everyone’s calling a Russian spy. Elizabeth Keen. I had figured you got her out of the country, stashed her somewhere. But you didn’t, did you? You kept her with you.” Madeline took a step forward, her face incredulous. “You brought the Russian spy for whom everyone and their mother is hunting to a party full of bounty hunters and pirates.” Madeline shook her head. “She’s young and pretty, I’ll give you that, but is the sex really worth it?”

“I don’t have time for this,” he hissed. “Pack up your pettiness and go home, Madeline. I swear on everything I have ever held dear, if I find out you’re involved in this, there is not one shred of our past history that can possibly protect you from me.”

Marsten interrupted with a freshly printed photograph, pulled from an outside camera. Red could only see part of the man’s face, but he recognized it all the same. Time hadn’t actually altered the man that much. “Richards,” he confirmed. “Get in contact with Aldoc,” he instructed, naming the Parisian hacker he used on occasion. “See if he can pull enough from CCTV to track where this Jaguar of his ends up. We need to move fast. The only thing we have going for us right now is that the people Richards is working for need her alive.”

He flipped through the other printouts as he talked, noting the rough way Richards manhandled Liz the moment he caught up to her in the alley. How he let her go, let her run, and then caught up with her again. Maybe this sadistic streak was why Richards had been cut loose from MI6 in the first place. Red had thought the former spook went underground to avoid a fallout with the Director; that’s where everything had pointed, and even Leonard Caul had agreed. But no, it seemed there was far more to this story, and somehow he’d managed to land Lizzy right in the middle of their trap.

Madeline was right; why had he brought Liz here? Why had he kept her so damned close? He should have trusted his first instinct to hide her away somewhere safe. But there was nowhere safe left, and it wasn’t like she would have stayed put. He couldn’t get lost in self-recrimination now. He had to focus. He had to find her, and trust that she could stay alive long enough for him to get to her.

Madeline had pulled the top printout out of his hands. “Owen Richards?” she asked, a tone in her voice he had never heard before. He looked at her sharply, but her expression was every bit as tight and fearful as her words. “Are you saying Owen Richards took the girl? Ray, we need to talk. Now.”

He slid past her and opened the door to the pantry that held all the crystalware, flipping on the old light switch as she entered. The light was pale and sickly, and it cast deep shadows around Madeline’s eyes. “Can you put that away, please?” she gestured to the gun. He flicked the safety in place, but didn’t let go of it.

“This had better be fast, and worth it,” he said, and knew it was serious when she didn’t rise to the double entendre bait. She usually never missed the chance.

“Four years ago, I had a job that I was arranging here in Paris.”

“The thing with Dechambou, yes. I have very distinct memories of that summer, thank you.”

“Laurence had an assistant, a pretty young thing she liked to keep around and toy with. You know how she was.” Madeline gestured with a waved hand, but Red wasn’t distracted by her use of the past tense.

“Was,” he repeated flatly.

Madeline’s jaw tightened. “I was supposed to have a follow up deal this past winter with Laurence, in Amsterdam, but she never showed. Instead, I found her little assistant, sobbing in her hotel room. She was half-dead, mutilated, hair chopped to pieces and her scalp bleeding...everything bleeding. I...she died in my arms, and…” Her voice became rough and she coughed slightly and turned away from him. She hated to cry, he knew.

He touched her arm lightly, enough pressure to be reassuring but not intrusive. “That sounds terrible, Madeline, and please don’t think me disrespectful of your pain, or hers, but…”

“The deal with Dechambou involved the sale of certain MI6 secrets. Mostly old covert ops files, the kind of stuff the collectors are into. Type-X machines in briefcases and all that Ian Fleming crap. Not usually my deal, but it sounded like a fun heist and I needed a pick-me-up after you stood me up in Florence. Again.” She shook her head and glared.

“You had your revenge for that, as I recall.”

“How _did_ you get out of that one?”

“Elizabeth Keen,” he replied, without even bothering to lie. “It’s something of a habit with us, saving each other’s lives. Which I would like to get on with, if you please.” He gestured impatiently with the hand that still held his pistol. “What happened to Laurence?”

She closed her eyes and winced. “I don’t know, but if I had to guess, the same thing that happened to her assistant. I think I was supposed to be next, but my bodyguard got me out of there in a hurry. He was shot on the way to the car. I left him there. I hate that I did, but I was terrified. The point to this, Ray, is that the only member of our supposed team unaccounted for was Owen Richards.”

He frowned. “What makes you think he was responsible?”

“Dechambou knew him, from a case before Richards left MI6. The way she described him, the words she used, the...I don’t know. I looked into it, later, when I felt safe. There were some files I managed to piece together through Haskell; remember Haskell?”

“Yes.”

“He pieced together the missing bits and a picture started to emerge of a very sadistic, sick man. MI6 covered it up for years, decades even, because he was too valuable an operative, but it reached crisis point when one of his victims was the daughter of a high-ranking officer in the Royal Air Force.”

Sheer terror for Lizzy seized his heart. “Victims.”

Madeline nodded slightly. “Victims. Dozens, maybe more, I don’t know. Serial killers aren’t exactly my forté, that’s more your girlfriend’s area of expertise. I can tell you that Richards doesn’t work for whomever you think he works for. He only works for himself, because everyone else wants him dead. Sound familiar?”

“I don’t kill people for pleasure, Madeline.”

“It’s a fine line, Ray, a very, very fine line.” She slid past him and put a hand on the doorknob. “I’m leaving; if Richards is in town, I won’t be. But for what it’s worth, I hope you find her. Good luck.”

“Goodbye,” he replied, the word weighted with so much more than he could ever possibly express.

Her eyes were suspiciously wet, and she swayed towards him for a moment as though she planned to kiss him, but kisses and tears were never Madeline Pratt’s style. She turned away again and disappeared into the hallway.

****************************

The slap woke her, and by the extent to which it stung, it wasn’t the first. She gasped as cold water followed, only to find her mouth somewhat limited by a layer of duct tape. “Wake up, little kitten,” a voice spoke gently, at odds with the rough actions.

Liz had been laid on her side, her head pillowed on some dusty, uncomfortable surface. She smelled that damp earthen quality that she associated with her aunt June’s storm cellar. When she opened her eyes, however, it wasn’t a row of neatly labeled mason jars that faced her, it was a row of human skulls.

She lifted her head slightly, and her eyes focused on the little piles of black hair that had been shorn from her head. She had expected that, and also expected the sting from his careless use of scissors cutting into her scalp. That had been in the file.

He didn’t drug his victims, though. He liked a fight. She’d be more than happy to give him one, even though all she could see right now were his shins. He stepped closer and sat down on an overturned bucket. She could try the humanizing route that she was trained to try; tell him her name, bits about her life in an attempt to get him to empathize. It was pointless, though. He wouldn’t care. How many woman had he held in damp, dark places like this over the years? How many lay bound and sobbing at his feet? It hadn’t helped any of them.

He laughed, a chuckle, really. Almost comforting in timber, as though such a nice-looking, elegant man with dimples in his cheeks, deep laugh lines around his warm eyes, and silver curls adorning his temples couldn’t possibly be the cold-blooded psychopathic murderer that he was. “You have some fire in you, little one. I like that.”

Without warning, his foot kicked out and caught her midsection. She gasped and curled up on herself, pain radiating out from a point on her side that must surely be a cracked rib. He pushed her over onto her back with his boot, and pressed his heel into her lower abdomen. A movement meant to show dominance, not necessarily cause pain.

He reached down and she saw the flash of a knife blade before the silk fabric was sliced from the bottom of her neckline to the point at which it split in the middle of the skirt; the dress transformed into little more than a light robe. Richards pulled the sides apart, leaving her entirely naked. The small lace panties she’d worn earlier were gone, as was the garter belt full of illicit jewels.

She fought down a wave of nausea as she panicked about what might have happened to her when she was unconscious, but according to the files she had read, the Phantom didn’t sexually assault his victims. He did nearly everything else to assert dominance, but not that. Why not? That had to be important; all of the other evidence pointed to a sexual motive.

He watched her, and while she felt herself shiver in the cold, her body reacting predictably by erupting in gooseflesh, her mind felt curiously detached. It felt like another woman, on the dusty stone floor, who was meant to be feeling alone and vulnerable. Coping mechanism, she realized; her mind had coated itself in the familiarity of analysis and prediction.

Reddington might have influenced a large portion of her career, driven her up through the ranks faster than she might have otherwise risen, but he hadn’t sat through her classes. He hadn’t written her papers, done her research, caught the monsters she’d caught. She had done that on her own. Determination hardened in her mind, forcing the fear to the side.

This man staring at her with terrifying coldness and lack of emotion might believe her the victim, but she refused to be one.

He reached down and pulled the fabric even farther from her sides, splaying it out like a pair of emerald wings. “I’m going to leave you for a bit to get comfortable. When I come back, we’re going to have a nice chat. I’d love to hear all about your mother.”

The words were punctuated with tiny little cuts of the knife into the top flesh of her breasts, and she winced. With her hands tied behind her back this tightly, and the duct tape holding her mouth closed, there was little she could do. He stepped out of her field of vision, footsteps echoing oddly.

She sucked in a slow breath through her nose, willing herself to remain calm and not panic as the only source of light faded with those footsteps. Now, she had to think, and think quickly. Where was she?

****************************

“Where is she?” Red said wearily, holding the phone to his ear with one hand while he loaded a new clip into the nine-millimeter Glock with the other.

“A small island in the Caribbean,” Dembe replied, and rattled off a set of coordinates. “I have the schematics from Agent Mojtabai. It is not good, Raymond.”

He held the phone between his cheek and shoulder as he clipped his gun belt into place. “I wouldn’t have expected otherwise. What does Baz say?”

“He says another group has been contracted. He was reluctant to get his men involved because of the attention it will draw, but far more willing when Mr. Kaplan explained the hostage was your daughter.” Red heard the sound of shifting footsteps as Dembe stepped away from whatever ambient noise was in the background. “What do you know about the Wild Wolves?”

Red stopped in the middle of pulling a pair of tactical boots out of the closet. God willing, they’d still be serviceable. He hadn’t used this particular bolt hole in about six years. “The wolf pack? The hell do they have to do with any of this? They’re a band of brothers; metaphorically, not literally. Ex-soldiers, special ops crew with a blighted enough background that they couldn’t find work outside the military, and so they took up middle management on the drug train out of Afghanistan. I run shipping for them occasionally.”

“Mr. Kaplan believes they work for Persephone.”

“And Persephone wants Jennifer to trade for Elizabeth.”

“That’s Mr. Kaplan’s belief as well, yes. Persephone claims that her wish is to prove value.”

Red huffed. “Not that I blame her for wanting to jump ship, but that seems a little too good to be true.”

“I agree.” Dembe’s voice came through muffled for a moment, as though he’d moved his head away from the receiver. “Someone wants to speak to you.”

Red grunted approval, not even bothering to ask Dembe who. Doubtless it was someone he wouldn’t really want to speak to, but whom Dembe wished him to tolerate. “Reddington.”

His eyebrows shot upward and he paused in his preparations.“Agent Ressler, this _is_ a surprise. I hope you’re not seriously trying to trace this call. I’d be happy to exchange addresses, except I seem to have missed last year’s Christmas card.”

A sharp exhale of disapproval would have amused Reddington on any other occasion, but right now he had little time to waste with this. “I know about Jennifer,” Ressler said in a low voice. “I know she’s not your daughter; I’ve seen her blood work on a medical file.”

Of course he had, of all people. “And that can never be faked?”

“A lot of things can be faked. But I don’t think you’re the type to let an innocent girl die, not for your sake.”

“Go on, Donald.”

“I know you’re not going to agree,” Ressler began, and Red felt a low, mirthless chuckle rise up in his chest. He knew exactly where this was headed. “If it comes to it, Red…”

“No.”

“Damn it, Reddington, do you think I want any of this either? Just listen to me. You can send your guys in first, but if they’re caught when we get there, I can’t guarantee their safety. I’m taking a gamble with Ferris, but I don’t trust her and I don’t trust her men. She’ll get Jennifer out of the cabal’s hands, but I don’t know that I can get her away from Ferris afterward. She may try to force a trade.” There was a soft hiss of breath, a frustrated exhale. “You know as well as I do that transfers are the weakest points.”

“A fact Persephone, or Dr. Ferris, whatever you want to call her, will undoubtedly know quite well. This isn’t even close to her first rodeo, Donald. Baz and the guys will be in and out before your strike team reaches the island. I’ll instruct them to take Jennifer only; King and his mooks are yours.”

There was a moment’s pause. “Not everything goes your way, Red. Not all the time. If they force a trade-”

“That can’t happen, Agent Ressler.”

“But if it does, we can-”

“It cannot happen.”

Ressler sucked in a breath. “You don’t have her. You don't want to set up a trade, because you don't have what they want. What happened to Liz? Is she okay?”

Red ignored the question. “Give the phone back to Dembe, please. This is not my only tactical strike of the night to plan.”

“Liz,” Ressler insisted.

“Alive, for now, but we ran into a problem and you’re eating up valuable amounts of my time that could be spent solving it,” he said acidly. A moment later, he added in a softer tone, “Concentrate on the island. If we do reach mission failure out there, I need you to be ready to do whatever you have to do to keep Jennifer alive. I owe her and her mother that much. Let me worry about Liz; I’ve been doing it a lot longer than you have.”

The silence on the other end was as good a confirmation as Red was likely to get. Half a minute later, Dembe was back on the line and Red confirmed the details and instructions for Baz and his crew. He snapped the phone closed a little rougher than he intended to, but there was no one there to startle except himself.

Fear for Jennifer now warred with fear for Liz in his heart, and he had to take a moment to breathe and gather his wits. Jennifer was far less capable than Liz, but then Francis King and Persephone needed Jennifer alive. Owen Richards was another matter.

He couldn’t save them both himself, and there was no one in Paris he could trust to find Liz in time. He would have to put his trust in Baz, but he was asking them to perform against impossible odds. It wouldn’t be the first time, but his group was still recovering and getting the heat off from the last nearly impossible job Red had handed him; getting those journalists together on such short notice had been no easy task, and they had made some enemies.

He would simply have to trust Ressler as a backup option. Donald Ressler was a good man, a moral and honorable one, however idiotic such things seemed these days. That made him predictable. Rarely would such a man step outside the law, but when he did, it would be for a damn good reason, and he would let very little stop him from attaining his goal. In this instance, Red hoped that goal would be Jennifer’s life. It was manipulative, but he knew what had happened with Audrey Bidwell would make Ressler even more determined not to let innocent lives die on his watch. All his efforts in the affair with the Monarch Douglas Bank in Warsaw had been proof of that.

What strange bedfellows these times brought. Not necessarily the strangest he’d ever had in his life, but at another time he might have enjoyed the irony. A light knock sounded on the door. “Enter.”

Vargas peered around the doorway. “Marsten called. They’ve been able to triangulate a section of town. Your instinct was right; it sits on top of a section of the catacombs that’s been closed off for years as unsafe. Part of the ossuary butts up against the old mines there, and it’s a warren of passages and sinkholes. They rarely let anyone do foundational repair in that region, for fear they might trigger collapses. He’s got a real Phantom of the Opera thing going, our target.”

“I need to pull you off this,” Red told him. “I need you to fly back to the States. Florida.”

“That’s where-”

“Yeah. I need you to get Carla out. Forget the husband, he had his chance. Leave him in the bed he made with his new friends.” Red pulled on and zipped up the short black jacket made of thick canvas that covered the thinner thermal layers beneath. The jacket would hold up against the rough stone in the catacombs. “Whatever resources you need will be made available. Coordinate with Dembe.”

The phone buzzed right after Vargas departed, and he picked it up after glancing at the number. “Agent Navabi, what can I do for you? Please make it brief; no doubt Ressler’s informed you of my urgency.”

“There are a few things Agent Ressler isn’t aware of that you need to know. I’m involved in a strange little dance with Dr. Ferris, and I can’t be sure how solid the intel is, mind you. But from what I understand, it seems she was hired by this cabal as a bounty hunter to bring in Elizabeth Keen, yes?”

“Old news, Samar.”

“She wasn’t the only one, and she’s trying to eliminate her competition. There was a mention of Johannesburg if that means anything to you?”

“It does.” Hell, that wasn’t good. “Who else?”

“Madeline Pratt.” Red closed his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to suspect Madeline, but he also hadn’t completely trusted her information. That was why he’d had Vargas put a tail on her. “Pratt was the one who got Francis King out of custody. He’s working for her.”

Of course. After everything he’d revealed to Madeline in order to get her to cough up those damned coordinates, she couldn’t possibly resist the temptation to dig into his past. Baiting the mission with the specter of his daughter along with disposal of Elizabeth practically ensured that Madeline would be fully on board with it. She did love neat little plots.

“There’s more,” Samar continued, obviously rushed and trying to get all the information out. “The person who gave up your daughter to the cabal is Tom Keen. He took over the remnants of Berlin’s organization some months ago. That’s why he went back to the Major and got himself placed in Germany; he wanted access to the Disenfranchised and their drug routes. He’s hired them as his personal wetworks squad in return for better transit. The cabal tried to hire him to track down Liz, but he bought them off with the intel about Jennifer instead. Or at least, that’s what Ferris says.”

Red chewed his lower lip for a moment. “She’s going through an awful lot of trouble to get information into the taskforce. What exactly is she trying to accomplish besides finding Elizabeth? There’s more at play here, Agent Navabi.”

“A lot more,” she agreed. “Ferris had classified information about an operation in Pakistan that involved my brother. Some of her men in this Wild Wolves organization? They’re ex-special-ops, and their names are in that file, too, along with hers. It’s all connected, somehow: my brother, Hannah Ferris and her organization, you, Liz, the cabal...all of it. I think Ferris more of a key player on the inside than we know, especially given the personal nature of her history with Alan Fitch. There’s something there she doesn’t want anyone to know.”

“She’s leading you by the nose to something. Can you find out what it is before Agent Ressler does?”

“I can try, but whatever it is, it has to do with you. She’s pushing hard for your covert files from before you went rogue, though the CIA and others are fighting her on releasing any information they have left. She’s using Katerina Rostova and Liz as an excuse to get to you.”

“Those files don’t exist anymore. If they did, I would have happily given them to Cooper and avoided all this nonsense."

“Neither do you, technically, but that didn’t stop me from bagging and tagging you.” Despite everything, Red felt his mouth twitch into a brief smile. Oh, he liked Samar Navabi. What a pity he stood no chance of getting her on his team full time. “Even the Invisible Man leaves footsteps,” Samar continued.

A jolt of shock went through his limbs, as though someone had pressed a taser to his neck, but this was purely emotional. “What?”

_How do you catch the Invisible Man, Lizzy?_

“That’s what Ferris says. Even if a puzzle has a hole, you can discern its shape by what else is around it; something about sprinkling flour on the floor to trap the Invisible Man by his footsteps.”

“Listen to me, Agent Navabi,” he said urgently. “I have heard only three people use that analogy in my entire life, and I don’t believe in coincidences. You need to find out who Hannah Ferris really is, and you need to find out as quickly as you can.”

He used to say it, and Sam, but the man they’d heard it from first was Elizabeth’s father.

Who the hell was Hannah Ferris, really?

**********************************

Paris had miles of underground tunnels. Liz wasn’t certain if she was in the catacombs or the abandoned mines. Bones would indicate the ossuaries, but that could just be set dressing.

There had been maps on the plane, but she had a terrible sense of direction and it was even worse in the dark. Sneaking out wasn’t an option; her only chances were to either string Richards along as long as she could bear to and hope against hope that Red could find her…

...or she could try and overpower him.

This wasn’t like Tracy Solobotkin, though. This killer wasn’t weak and looking to gain power to make up for a physical defect. Owen Richards was tall, broad-shouldered, and had a wiry strength and speed she couldn’t underestimate.

And yet he didn’t sexually assault his victims. Why? In cases like these, there was always a sexual assault; Liz would have laid a good amount of money betting on some posthumous horror show if she were doing the profile. So why didn’t he?

_Because he couldn’t._

There. There it was. She had him. She had also managed to work her wrists around to her front side as she pondered. All those hot yoga classes and the core-building FBI training had paid off. Within minutes, she was free of the ropes.

Carefully, she hid her hands behind her as she sat up against the wall. Bones. Yes, those were bones, and they felt brittle and sharp with age. She would have to be careful; God only knew what weapons Richards hid within the pockets of his elegantly tailored tuxedo and coat. She had to get him off-guard, and then strike at just the right moment.

She coughed a little, throat dry from worry and dust. The light began to come back, along with the footsteps. Liz did her best to present a face of resignation and fear. It wasn’t really all that hard to do, plan or no. There was very little chance this would work, and very good odds that she would end up dead.

God, she hoped it wouldn’t be Red that found her body. If there was any innate justice in the universe, it would be someone else that found her first, cleaned her up, held his hand while he identified her. She couldn’t bear the thought that he would find her here, naked and cut into, bruised and bloody. Not after everything he had done to try and keep her safe. It would shatter him.

He had tried to envelop her in care and protection in place of the love and affection he would have given her, had he been any other man. But he was Raymond Reddington. That had been all of himself that he was able to give, and to know that it had been everything and still hadn’t been enough...she couldn’t bear the thought of what that weight of failure would do to him.

Liz squeezed her eyes closed against the tears that threatened to fall. Richards made a pleased sound as he approached her, reaching over to pull off the duct tape from her mouth, and hate surged white-hot inside her breast. Her fingers clenched around a rough shape behind her back. Not a bone, it was too rough, too dense. A loose stone. Perfect.

“What was her name?” Liz whispered hoarsely, past the lump in her throat, past the dry and swollen tongue.

“Hmm?” Richards asked, pulling the overturned bucket closer and taking a seat. He placed the little hurricane lantern between them on the ground. The angle of illumination cast devilish shadows across his brow. Fitting.

Liz watched him warily, knowing full well that the placid exterior hid a deep well of psychopathic anger and violence. His eyes lingered pointedly at the most private parts of her body; her breasts, the shadow between her legs that was hidden from his view by the way she sat against the wall. There was no lust in his gaze, only hardness.

“The woman,” she said. “The one who laughed at you, ridiculed you for not being able to love her like a man. But you couldn’t, could you? You didn’t like women, but it was England in the early Sixties and you couldn’t admit it. It was still a crime. Did you even know? Do you know now, that it’s men you want?”

“Boys, actually,” he countered calmly, with a small, fond smile. “I kill them, too. I always kill a woman before or after. It’s a nice symmetry: what I want, and what I need. They absolve each other.”

Dear God. “What was her name?” Liz pressed, trying to push down the desperate panic welling up inside of her. “Was it your mother?”

He laughed, and stood, pushing away the bucket. “We’re not here to talk about my mother, Agent Keen. We’re here to talk about yours.”

Liz swallowed, hard. “The cabal.”

Richards snorted. “How cute. Also rather antiquated.”

“You’re working for them, still.”

“Dear little Elizabeth, I am not in the habit of giving out information, I’m in the habit of retrieving it. You can ask all the questions you like, I’d never deny a lady her pleasure, but please don’t expect answers. You’ll only be disappointed.”

“Then you’re not,” she countered, “but you want to be. God, it must be so _boring_ ,” she injected as much derision into her tone as she could muster, “living on the fringes of the life you once enjoyed. You kill for pleasure, but they used to pay you to do it, to hurt people. You miss it.”

He pulled a canvas roll from his trench coat and unfurled it to reveal a host of sharp and terrifying instruments. “You are simply adorable. Tell me, do you have a nickname? Beth? Betsy? Eliza?” He smiled. “ _Lizzy_?”

The way his voice caressed the diminutive, like his tongue washed over each individual letter, made her shiver. It was the way Reddington said her name, but there was no warmth, no affection behind it, and she could see now so very clearly the gulf between a true psychopath and a man like Reddington.

Richards didn’t care who he hurt, or how many people. He had no sympathy. Reddington cared; he just did it anyway. He hurt and killed where he had to, where he believed he must, and he cut off little pieces of his soul each time, living in and absorbing the darkness so that other people could live in the light. He had failed to save his family, his child, and that failure drove him relentlessly, each new failure adding fuel to the fire.

Damn it, she would not be fuel to anyone’s fire. She would survive this. She was so much more than a victim.

She let tears fall, tears of anger, but let him think they were fear. Let him think he could break her. In the back of her mind, the inner voice driving her forward suddenly sounded a lot like Meera Malik during one of her informal interrogation talks. _Do this, don’t do this. Let them see this, don’t let them see that. Always offer a cup of water._

Richards was selecting a tool out of his pouch. If he turned, just fractionally, she could catch his knee at just the right angle to break it. She let out a little gasping breath, and he turned fractionally, eyes taking in her tear-soaked countenance with no little satisfaction.

His hand closed around something that looked like an ice pick. This was her only chance. Once he got to work, she’d undoubtedly twitch or flail and he’d see that her hands were unbound.

She kicked out, hard, and caught his knee right where she wanted to. He pitched forward, and cried out in pain and surprised fury. He hit the stone hard, but turned and lashed out with the pick. She moved just in time, but it still ripped at her calf muscle.

God bless Ressler for taking her into the boxing ring and teaching her how to kip-up. She launched herself into a crouch from her supine position and stepped on Richards’s wrist. He tried to pull it out, to unbalance her, but she aimed another kick at his face, and his head whipped back.

She struck him hard across the temple, rock in hand, and he went limp. Hurriedly, she stripped off his trench coat, then grabbed the extra rope and tied his wrists to his ankles the way Meera had shown her once. _If you’re alone, and they’re bigger than you, hogtie them. Here’s the knot to use; the more they struggle, the tighter it gets._

Only when he was as secure as she could make him did she bother to check his pulse. She had aimed to knock him out, not kill. Not yet.

Liz put on the trench coat over the scraps of her green dress and tied the sash around her waist. Oh, there were all sorts of fun things in his pockets. She patted him down on the ground, and removed his shoes, socks, wristwatch, and anything else he could potentially reach, placing them in the bucket.

Raising the lantern a little to scan her surroundings, she found the jug of water he’d used to wake her up. It was still cold, really cold. They couldn’t be too far from whatever entrance to the catacombs he’d used; there must be a kitchen with a freezer or refrigerator nearby. She set the lantern down in a corner it would take him a while to roll to, then tore the cap off the jug and dumped a good portion of it into his face.

Richards gasped and spluttered, the water sluicing away some of the blood from where she had struck him. More welled in its place. Head wounds tended to bleed profusely. There would be a nice wet puddle under his head soon. He looked up at her, blinking, shock written over his face as he struggled against his bonds.

“Now, then,” she said, sliding the ice pick between her fingers, “let’s talk about my mother.”

************

TBC


	11. Jennifer Reddington

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long chapter, and there's a lot that happens. Make sure you have some snacks, maybe, or a good stiff drink (provided you are of legal age to drink in your country). 
> 
> There is next to no Liz in this chapter, and no Liz POV. Just a warning, going in. But don't worry, the next chapter is almost exclusively Liz, and will backtrack a bit over the timeframe of this chapter. 
> 
> This was a bear to write, and special thanks to figure_of_dismay and deandratb for the beta-work. 
> 
> LOTS of ass-kicking, injuries, general whump in this chapter.

“I’m not really trained for this,” Aram pointed out, looking doubtfully at the gear Hannah handed him. 

She put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “You’re not coming in with the extraction team, but I need you here on communications.” She paused. “I’m Batman, you’re Oracle.”

He blinked at her. “I feel like I should be ashamed to acknowledge that I understood that reference.”

Hannah pulled her combat vest on and fastened it securely. “Why? If there’s one uniting factor in this world, it’s that we can all agree Batman is awesome.”

She left Aram with the computer setup and stepped through the door to the other half of the shipping warehouse. Everything smelled like a mixture of sea brine and motor oil. It sucked to be in the Caribbean for anything other than cocktails on the beach and jerk chicken. But this was life.

“What’s good, boys?” she called, and a riot of hoots and hollers met her question. She grinned as she scanned the familiar faces. It had been a few years since they’d all gotten together. Hell of a night for a reunion.

Family was important. This was hers. It had taken nearly fifteen years of her life to find them, to learn that even when you lose one family you can find another. She could call herself a lone wolf, but wolves traveled in packs for a reason. That’s what they had all learned on those hot sands and stark mountain summits. 

She had killed for the first time when she was eight years old. Four years later, she had been implanted in a Rwandan refugee camp in Zaire as an undercover operative for Alan Fitch, feeding news back to him through a humanitarian organization. Two years she spent in that camp, helping her “mother” nurse cholera victims, treating victims of domestic violence, swaddling orphan babies, laughing and playing music with the locals. She had killed at least six people over that time span, between the ages of twelve and fourteen. 

When she returned to the States at fifteen, she went back to Bud and helped him train a new round of recruits in Chicago. She was his most shining example of success. She let Jacob Phelps believe they lost their virginity together at sixteen, but the truth was that she’d bargained that away for information on a rebel patrol at age thirteen in the dark heart of the Congo. Sex was a weapon, and she had constructed quite an arsenal. 

An arsenal she’d later turned loose on Alan Fitch, hurting him through his own sense of guilt. He knew who she was, and what he’d trained her to be. He was the one that had found her, after all, standing in the middle of the road without a coat, blood-stained and wild. She’d left her humanity on the lid of her grand piano the night she killed that first man and fled into the cold dark. Fitch had never once tried to help her find it again, so she made him feel precisely what he’d turned her into, in the most visceral way that she was able. 

But then she’d taken the military assignment, and the heat of the desert had burned away her sins, leaving her alone and frightened and unsure of herself. Who was she, really? Without the armor of violence and other people’s blood, who was Hannah Ferris?

She was a commander who was not going to let her men die. It boiled down to that one, simple fact. They were supposed to die. Every last man standing in the warehouse with her now had been earmarked for death, sacrificial lambs on a profit-driven altar of war. Then they saved her life, risking everything by disobeying orders to retrieve her out of enemy custody when the mission went south.

Whatever it took, whatever she had to do, she would look out for them. They had pulled her out of that damn cave in more ways than one. They were her light, her reason for fighting. The dark hold on her had snapped, and with the realization of who she really was, what she really was–You’re worth it, Hannah–had come the knowledge of what exactly Fitch had taken from her on that night long ago. 

Anger, she found, really could burn hotter than the desert sun. 

She shouldered the Belgian P-90 and strapped on her helmet. “Let’s go, boys, let’s go.”

*************************

“We move on my signal,” Marsten said, pulling his assault rifle off his shoulder. 

Red held his Glock at the ready, two more clips and a secondary sidearm at his waist, combat knife strapped to his boot. It had been a while since he’d had to take such an active part in any covert action, but it was essentially muscle memory at this point in his life.

They took up position around the street and an old row of houses that generally served as a front for Paris’s underground betting ring. The group that ran operations out of this neighborhood was known to have access to a network of underground tunnels that was closed off from the parts more commonly traversed by tourists. 

Marsten believed this was where Richards had brought Liz. They had found the car not far away, and when Red ran his hand over the lining in the trunk, he’d turned up one of the green diamond earrings he’d given Liz earlier that night. There were also bloodstains, but though they were fresh, it did not look to be a lethal amount spilled.

In any other life, it would seem impossible this was where the night had led him; the earlier evening so relaxed and full of promise and temptation. To have gone from that sweet, satin moment to this cold, rain-drenched, rough night was simply incongruous. But this was his world. 

“Let’s go, boys.”

************************

Once again, the brash arrogance of the one-percenters pissed Ressler off as he picked his way carefully through the abandoned gated community alongside Hannah Ferris. The woman moved with an easy, practiced grace, and he remembered the snippets he had seen of her special ops file. It was extensive. She’d been a lieutenant at nineteen, made captain by twenty-one, done multiple tours in Afghanistan, Iraq. Multiple Navy Seals ops in and around the Persian Gulf. Honorably discharged at age twenty-five, at which point she went after her degree at Princeton. 

When Aram had come back with the tip from Reddington about Ferris, he’d dismissed a large amount of her file as forgery. But watching her now, in command and perfectly at home with it, he realized how wrong it was to try and fit her into the mental box he’d labeled ‘criminal’. Just like Reddington, she was far more nuanced and capable, and he had to step outside of his training to try and understand who exactly she was. 

These were men he would have called heroes, whose service to their country he respected and championed. Yet they were now mercenaries, working for a woman who, according to Reddington’s people, ran one of the biggest drug cartels in Asia Minor in addition to being regarded as a top-notch assassin. It was difficult to reconcile that mental picture with the pretty blonde woman who had sat on a crate bullshitting and singing pop songs with dirty lyrics alongside a group of soldiers only an hour ago.

But then it was also difficult to resolve the image of the hardened criminal traitor with the man who had pumped his own blood into Ressler’s veins to save his life; the man who had counseled him not to seek vengeance for Audrey, lest he become the very thing he hated. 

If anyone had asked him even a month ago what it was that he hated, he would have held up Reddington as an example. Life had become a lot more complicated lately, and the lines by which he defined his world had begun to blur uncomfortably. He was supposed to be hunting down Elizabeth Keen and Raymond Reddington, yet here he was alongside a group of mercenaries and an assassin, hoping to track down a woman he had promised Reddington he would keep alive. 

Whatever Jennifer was to Reddington, she didn’t deserve this fate; a bargaining chip on a grand craps table without even knowing who was going to throw the dice next. No one deserved that. He knew that much. That, right now, was the line he had to cling to. 

Right now, that was all anyone had. Ferris had moved up the timetable without warning, and Ressler wasn’t certain Samar had been able to get a message out to Dembe. If he didn’t manage to stay glued to Ferris, he wasn’t sure what would happen to Jennifer Reddington.

*********************

Red did his best to stay glued to Marsten; he wasn’t sure what would happen if Marsten got to Owen Richards first. The security agent was not a man who thought much outside the stark black and white lines of his world; his men came first, everything else came after. It was admirable, and a sentiment Red understood, but Red needed Richards alive.

Only when he’d squeezed out every last drop of information would he hand the withered husk of the ex-spy over to Marsten. Then Marsten could dispose of Richards however he liked.

Doors were kicked in, and guns were raised, but Red stopped cold halfway into the second house. This was wrong. There was no one. This was all wrong. 

“Erik!” he called into his headset only to be met with static. It was a trap, and Red had run them all straight into it. 

That was his last coherent thought as bullets rained down from the second floor landing, taking out Red’s flanking guard and driving him deeper into the house. He was separated and alone, but he managed to take out at least two of the shooters as they sped down the stairs. He kicked in the door at the end of the hallway, gambling on it being a kitchen, but half-expecting the worst.

The worst was confirmed a moment later when he stepped through and raised his weapon only to meet at least two assault rifles and three semi-automatics. It was, at least, the kitchen. He’d been right about that. He’d also been right in guessing it might be filled with gunmen covering the other exit.

He held up his hands and a large man with a very generous beard relieved him of his weapons. Marsten and two of his remaining men were guided into the room a minute later. They were placed on their knees and shot methodically, despite Red’s hoarse protests. Seven shooters, he counted. Seven men, armed, and he was on his own. 

They should have never left Liz’s hotel room. He should have given in, just that once. At least he might have been able to hold her close, feel her hair against his cheek one last time. Maybe he would have known what it would be like to kiss her, to be kissed _by_ her, but this time with heat and passion. He could have let her know that he loved her as he’d never loved anyone else in his life. 

A black sack descended over his head, and he was cuffed, picked up, and shuffled into a car. He closed his eyes, trying his damnedest to listen to the traffic noises, try to map the shifting route in his head. Every time he closed his eyes to picture the Parisian map, instead all he saw were a pair of heavy-lidded blue-gray eyes filling with tears, looking at him angrily, watching him with reluctant affection. _Lizzy_. Her name a knife in his heart with each breath he took. 

How wretchedly he had failed her, failed everyone. Kate had her instructions, as did Dembe, but that was all Red had left; his parting shot from the grave. Everything else was dust.

************************

Donald Ressler was no stranger to firefights, but this was different. This was an all-out assault. Considering the last time he’d been in one, he’d spent the majority of the time screaming, bleeding, or unconscious, he had to say he was handling this much better. 

Still, he’d had no real concept of how a stealth fighter moved until he watched Hannah Ferris in action. She was a silent shadow, a viper that struck around corners and through the mist of shot-out pipes. He remembered his days as an undergrad, staying up all night with his dorm friends and playing Halo or one of the Bond games while they swigged a six pack of cheap beer. They had laughed at the cartoonish violence, doubting anyone could ever really move like that. 

Ferris elbowed him hard enough to push him against the compound’s inner wall and seconds later bullets whizzed past where they had been standing. They ran a few feet, then rounded a corner and ducked down behind a door with a broken glass window. Hannah fired off a few rounds through the jagged frame, then ducked behind the masonry surrounding the door as more bullets came spitting through. 

He tore off a flash grenade from his belt, but she raised a hand, looking up through the window. He could see her lips move, counting. Then she signaled him to throw it, and he pulled the clip and tossed it through the window. They ducked down as it went off, and Hannah rolled to her knees and then was on her feet. She pushed the door outward quickly, catching the man behind it by surprise. The man stumbled backward, and Ferris put a swift bullet into his head. 

They moved back through the door and into the hallway. Ressler felt a hand grab him from behind, and wound up fighting quick and dirty hand-to-hand with another adversary whose weapon had been knocked loose by the grenade. He struck the man on the bottom of the chin with an uppercut, but the wind was knocked from his chest a moment later as a knee connected with his stomach.

He doubled over involuntarily, and then a boot caught him in his old thigh wound and Ressler went down, hard. He pitched his weight forward, desperately, catching his assailant in the solar plexis with the edge of his helmet. The man stumbled back, but before Ressler could follow through on the attack, a spurt of blood caught him by surprise. 

The enemy combatant fell to his knees, a combat knife handle protruding from his left eye. Ressler swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat at the sight and tried to catch his breath. A hand extended to pick up the knife, wiping the blade off on the dead man’s combat vest. A hand with pink nail polish, he noticed for the first time that night. 

The hand reached for him and he grabbed onto Hannah’s forearm, letting her surprising strength help pull him upright. Her background in martial arts was no joke; he had seen her work out in the fitness center and give lessons on hand-to-hand defensive throws. Pink nail polish, he thought again.

She held him steady when he stumbled slightly, cursing his leg. “You okay?”

He winced. “No, but I’ll figure it out. Let’s go.”

Without allowing him to argue, she shifted under his shoulder and pressed her hip to his. “Let’s get out of this hallway and we’ll wrap it when we’ve secured this section,” she said. “Hold on to me.”

Her radio crackled to life and the magic words of “target secured” sounded over the static. Ressler exchanged a surprised look with Hannah; they hadn’t expected to locate her so quickly. They paused in the middle of the corridor, and Ressler balanced against the wall, still unable to put much weight on his leg. “This is Leader One. Clarify target.”

He watched her pinched expression with interest. For a moment, Ressler had very nearly forgotten everything that Ferris really was, and had reveled in the brief feeling of camaraderie. Throughout the assault they had worked in mostly silent tandem, communicating non-verbally as though they had the familiarity of years behind them instead of days.

“Secondary,” a different voice replied. “Secondary target secure; the rich boy. Jesus, Turner, learn to radio.”

“I’ll teach your mom to radio, how’s that?”

“Cut the chatter, kids. Northwest portion secure. North, report. I have injured.”

“North secure.”

Aram’s voice. “This is Control. There’s a freight elevator to your left, about six feet, if you’re in the northwest corridor, Leader One. If north is secure, you just have to travel down the servants’ galley through the kitchen to get there.”

“Fuck,” Hannah swore, off the radio. “I hate kitchens. Do you know how many deadly things you can throw at someone in a kitchen? Not to mention there’s always at least two or three bored, trigger-happy goons that have been told by someone to guard an exit.” She thumbed the radio back on. “Control, this is Leader One. Any alternative to Murder Alley?”

“Acknowledged, hold on.” 

“Exactly how many times have you fought and/or killed someone in a kitchen, Dr. Ferris?” he snapped acidly, the pain in his leg getting to him. 

She gave him a long look and her features hardened a bit. He hadn’t realized there’d been a little light in her eyes until it went out and coldness clamped down in its place. “Enough times. I watched my mother bleed to death in a kitchen, Agent Ressler. I don’t do kitchens.”

“Control to Leader One.”

“Leader One,” she replied. “What did you find?”

“Looks like your only alternative is the bathhouse attached to the swimming pool, but the pool’s outdoors. There’s no cover.” 

Ferris looked at Ressler, running a critical eye over him. “Shit, are you bleeding?”

Come to think of it, his shoulder did hurt like hell. He hadn’t noticed it at first over his leg. “Yeah, damn. I think I got clipped earlier.”

“Bathhouse it is,” she told him. “At least I can get you cleaned up there. Elevators are death traps, and the kitchen sounds like a terrible idea. Leader One to Control. I’ll take option B. Taylor.”

“Yeah,” replied a new voice.

“You’re designated Leader One, now. Find the girl. Sampson, you’re now designated North. I need the gate secure. Round ‘em up, toss them in the pool. Try to keep some alive for questioning.” She tucked the radio back into her vest. “Taylor’s the one teamed up with Agent Navabi. Don’t worry, you’ll still have eyes on Jennifer Reddington.”

He looked at her, but her face was a mask. She stepped forward. “Since you’re a smart boy and have caught up to what’s going on, let me tell you this: I don’t care about using Jennifer as a bargaining chip. Reddington won’t give up Elizabeth Keen for her.”

“You knew she wasn’t really his daughter.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Irrelevant. The point is that what I care about, Agent Ressler, is taking away the advantages of my opponents. Their biggest advantage of the moment is Jennifer Reddington and what information she can supply.” 

He blinked. “I don’t understand. Information?”

“If Jennifer Reddington isn’t actually Reddington’s daughter, then who the hell is she? Who is Carla Reddington, the woman you know as Naomi Highland? Did you actually read the file you wormed out of Kat Goodson? I know you’re in pain, but focus. Reddington had a CIA handler.”

Dozens of pieces began to slide into place. “Liz complained that Red was hiding Naomi Highland from her, but he was also hiding her from us. She was his handler, posing as his wife.”

“Raymond Reddington’s black ops files are gone. Physically destroyed. The only record that remains of them…”

“...is Carla Reddington.”

Hannah nodded. “Jennifer is her daughter. Once they get that out of Jennifer, they’ll realize the wealth of information they can get from Carla. Information pertaining to Elizabeth Keen’s parents. That is what I care about.”

“You weren’t hired to hunt down Liz?”

“Oh, I was. Do you always do what you’re hired to do, Donald?” He stepped forward to answer, but then his leg gave way and she caught him. “Okay, enough exposition here; we need to move. I need to get you somewhere where we can brace that leg and patch that shoulder before you pass out on me. I can serve as a crutch, but I doubt I can deadlift you, you’re what, one-eighty, one-ninety pounds of practically solid muscle?”

Ressler bit back a laugh. “Dr. Ferris, are you hitting on me?”

She grinned. “Maybe. Hold on,” she added, slinging his arm around her shoulder. “This is going to hurt like a bitch until we can sit you down.”

“I’m ready.”

*********************************

The sack slid off his head, and Reddington didn’t need to blink much to adjust to the lighting. It was the low, yellow light of antique lamps. He was seated in an equally antique, and uncomfortable, wooden chair in the middle of a hotel room. The shades were drawn, and the murky early morning light barely filtered through around the edges. He hadn’t been there before, but recognized the monogram on the small towel hanging from the liquor cart in the corner. One of Dechambou’s private establishments. 

His hands were tied in plastic cuffs. He could work his wrists free, given time. It was their mistake bringing him into a building, where he could find cover and a whole host of items that could be weapons. It was the open field where he was vulnerable; give him cover, and his chances of survival went up exponentially.

There was, of course, the matter of the man holding the assault rifle who now stood at the door, but Red could hope a creative solution might manifest itself. It had been, by his count, nine hours since Liz had been taken. There was still a chance, no matter how slim, that she was still alive. If he could get out of here…

He bit down on his panic. That was what had landed him here in the first place, rushing in after…

Red closed his eyes as he fit the pieces together. “Son of a bitch,” he swore softly. If he hadn’t let his worry for Liz obscure everything else, he might have seen it sooner. 

“That’s twice you’ve walked right into a trap for me, Raymond,” said an amused, yet knife-edged voice. He turned his head and saw her sitting in the corner, the shadow of a large armoire falling over her. Lamplight glistened from the surface of the amber liquor she drank. Brandy, probably. She loved a good German brandy. “For a guy who’s made a career out of being unpredictable, that’s fairly unprecedented.”

“Madeline,” he acknowledged. Why hadn't it occurred to him that the only way she or Dechambou could have gotten the name of Owen Richards was through the same source as himself and Leonard Caul? The cabal. They'd disseminated the intel with the ex-spy’s name on it, and Red had taken the bait. Trout. Butterworm. 

He sat back nonchalantly in his chair and would have folded one leg over the other if they hadn’t been bound at the ankles. “I suppose this is the part where I ask if any of your story was real?”

“And this is the part where I reply with a stony gaze and let you think what you like.” She smiled and set the glass down.

They watched each other in silence for a long moment. He wanted to ask her how much they were paying her, offer her double, but it wasn’t about the money. It never was about the money for her. It was the thrill. The dark part of himself, the part that also loved walking that edge of madness and daring the shadows on the other side to catch him if they could...that was the part of him that had been so drawn to her; the blood-soaked devil and his demon of seduction and lies. 

That was why he hadn’t gone to Florence, either time. This wasn’t love, it never had been. It was all a game, and neither one of them would be content to lose to the other. There had always been an element of poison between them, and Madeline had now embraced it fully. 

Madeline stood and motioned to the man by the door. He came closer. “You released your ace of spades into the wild to try and cover for the girl,” she explained. “Now they don’t fear you. It’s a pity; otherwise, I’d be able to bring you in alive. But now? Now they want to take no chances with you.”

“And they’ve offered you a seat at the table in return.”

Madeline shrugged one shoulder delicately. “I don’t know if I want it; I was only ever interested in a new customer base. Any last requests?” She touched his face gently, almost reverently, her fingertips sliding over his lips. “Though you did say an audience isn’t your style,” she fairly purred.

“Is she alive?”

Madeline dropped her hand, shaking her head slightly, the corner of her mouth hitching upwards. “Oh, Raymond. I don’t know how you survived twenty years of this business; underneath everything rough and dark beats the heart of a valiant little knight just drowning in the squalor of this evil world. I wanted you to save me, you know, to pull us both out of this tangle. You didn't."

“There are no sunsets to ride off into, Madeline. The world isn’t as simple as black and white, hero and villain. Is she alive?”

“For now, probably. I don’t know. I don’t know how long it takes him to get information out. He was the best, back in his day. That’s why I picked him.”

“She doesn’t know anything.”

Madeline put her hands on his shoulders. “Well, then they wasted a lot of money on nothing.” She pushed him backwards, and he braced himself for impact with the floor, managing to lift his head just enough to avoid a concussion. As if that mattered. 

“Make it quick. I’ll be out front.” The door opened and closed and the fading click of heels against hardwood signaled her retreat.

His left hand was almost free, but it wouldn’t be enough. Even if he could grab the muzzle of the rifle, there was a handgun on the man’s waist and another at his shoulder. His odds were low.

Red sighed and closed his eyes. “Lizzy,” he half-whispered, trying to summon the look of her face when she smiled; that certain half-exasperated, half-amused smile that was for him alone. That spark in her eye when their minds met perfectly in tandem. The way she smelled. Pantene and clean, crisp perfumes with names like Linen and Seabreeze. Eyes closed, heart filled with love, he faced his death. When the bullet came, he didn’t feel it. 

*******************************

Hannah worked swiftly to clean out and patch Ressler’s shoulder. He barely felt the sting, so quickly was it done. Of course, it was difficult to feel much over the throbbing in his leg. She unrolled a sports bandage. “Pants,” she motioned.

He gave her a look and she returned it with exasperation. “Pants,” she repeated. 

He grit his teeth but unbuckled and pulled down his pants far enough for her to get the bandage around his leg. She worked quickly there, too, clinical fingers tightening and securing it to give his damaged muscles support. Those same hands worked to help him get his pants back in place, and he tried valiantly not to be affected by her closeness. It was simply their situation, not her. He just had to remember that before he went and did something stupid like develop a sense of compassion toward someone that was likely to kill him. 

She was damned beautiful, though. An iron-jawed Amazon in battle armor. He’d always been drawn to delicate women, the gentle souls that made him feel protective and strong. Liz...he had started to care about Liz when she showed him those vulnerable sides, but after a while he began to value her strength even more. Particularly so when he was the one feeling weak. He wouldn’t call it love, not really. It might have been someday, but that hadn't been their path. 

She _was_ a friend, and a good one. Even now, even when she had made choices that he couldn’t begin to fathom, when she had betrayed everything they were supposed to stand for, he couldn’t turn his back on that. He was still damned furious with her, but he only wanted her back so that he could help her. She was his partner, and his friend.

He watched Ferris reload her smaller sidearm and do the same for his. Was that how she felt about all those soldiers out there? She had called them her brothers, her family. There had been such a light in her face when she looked at them, talked to them. They jokingly called her “Boss” and “Alpha”, sometimes “Big Sis”, which earned them a swat on the back of the head. He had only ever seen her expression closed and cryptic, never this open and genuine. 

Who was the real Hannah Ferris? The brilliant psychologist with a doctorate from Princeton or the contract killer with a band of mercenaries who ran a drug cartel in their spare time? He cynically thought of his own student loans and figured that, at least, was one way to pay for college. 

...and now he was starting to sound like Liz, blurring the lines between his defined areas of right and wrong. It started with humor or in anger, but at some point it would cross over and he’d no longer be able to sense where the line had even started. That was what Reddington had tried to warn him about, sending him Tanida’s head in a box as a visceral reminder of the difference between their worlds, the subtext to his note asking Donald if that was really the man he wanted to become. 

He still thought of it with a shudder. 

“Are you okay?” Ferris asked, eyeing him closely. “Are you cold?”

It was eighty-five degrees, even after midnight, and the humidity made Ressler feel like he was breathing in lungfuls of sponges. “No, I’m not in shock,” he confirmed. He stood, gingerly testing his leg, and it held his weight. “I’m good.”

“All right, let’s -”

The radio crackled. “Position compromised! North is down! Fall back to East!”

“Control!” Hannah snapped into the radio, but there was no response from Aram. Ressler frowned. Reddington’s men wouldn’t have gone after Aram. “Control, come in. Leader One, report.”

“There’s nothing to report, I’m afraid. By now, they’ve been captured.”

Hannah whipped around at the voice and fired two shots in rapid succession without a moment’s hesitation. Ressler barely had time to raise his own weapon and point it in the general direction the words had come from. Hannah’s bullets were buried in the cracked tile around the entryway.

In the bright moonlight reflected by the white tiles of the bath house walls, Ressler saw four shapes close in on their position from the corner of his eye. “Hannah,” he said in warning. There was no way they were winning a shootout.

She saw it, and the muscle in her left cheek twitched as she held up her hands. He did the same. The owner of the voice rounded the corner of the entryway, and Ressler stared in shock. 

Jennifer Reddington. 

What the hell kind of game had he stumbled into?

She was unharmed apart from some fading bruises on her face, remnants of the fistfight that had gotten her out of jail. Clever. Had she been working with the King boy this entire time to engineer this? Why? What did she want with them?

“I don’t know where Reddington is,” he said, taking a stab in the dark at what she might be after. “Or Elizabeth Keen. None of my people do, either.”

She raised an eyebrow in surprise. “That’s fine, Agent Ressler. I do.”

“If not them, what do you want?”

“Me,” Hannah answered. “Hi, Jen. It’s been a while. I wasn’t sure you’d remember.”

The other woman strode across the tile as Hannah and Ressler were relieved of their weapons. It took a minute before they’d satisfied themselves that they’d thoroughly disarmed Ferris. Even Ressler hadn’t known about the three hidden knives. Once unarmed, one man each took her arms and held them in place, while another two held Ressler’s.

Jennifer struck a vicious blow to Hannah’s face, and her head whipped to the side. She grunted and then looked forward again, blood pouring from her nose. “Yeah, so, you remember me, then, I take it,” she spat. “Are you going to get to what you want quickly, or do you need some more time to work out your daddy issues on me?”

Another blow caught Hannah to the solar plexus and she doubled over, wincing and coughing. Ressler struggled against the men holding him, but it was futile. Jennifer looked over to him and nodded to the men. One took the butt of his rifle and slammed it into Ressler’s leg, and he went down with a cry. The men held fast to him.

Hannah sucked in a breath. “You know they’re not part of this.”

“No,” Jennifer replied, “I don’t know that. You brought them in on this, and we have no idea how much information you might have given them. For Christ’s sake, you had them paging through your father’s covert operational files, or what’s left of them. You all but led them to my mother, and it’s a short leap from her to me, and to the program after that. So yes, they’re a part of this. You made them a part of this, just like he did.” She stepped forward again. “I know what you’ve done, Charlotte. You don’t fool me. You’re not on our side, you never were. As soon as you found out your father was still alive, you did the same thing he did, only you never told anyone. You fooled Alan Fitch and the others, but not me, and not the man I work for.”

Ressler fought through the fog of pain to process the low words he was overhearing. _Her father’s covert operational files_. The only files they’d been trying to obtain were Reddington’s.

_I watched my mother bleed to death in a kitchen._

_Believe it or not, Donald, I do understand how you feel._

He looked at Hannah, blood dripping from her nose, tight expression on her face as she warily watched her opponent. He could see it, now, in the jawline, the brow, the lips. Her nose was more aquiline, her cheekbones more pronounced. They had the same chin. 

“You waited until he was ready to release the information in the fulcrum,” Jennifer continued, “and then you made your move. You want the FBI and others to put together legal cases, to prosecute, to drag it all into the light while your father pulls the strings on the criminal side of things. It’s not going to work. We have him, we have the Russian girl, and now we have you. As we speak the remnants of your little taskforce are being scrubbed; all legal traces erased, all key personnel disavowed, the physical locations destroyed, along with all data and files pertaining to it. They should have done it from the start, but some people wanted to see how it would play out and take the cautious route. So here we are.”

Hannah leaned forward, allowing blood to pool on the tile and away from her mouth. “So where does that leave you, Jen? What do you have left to bargain with? If you kill Agent Ressler and the others, my people, what the hell do you have left that you think I care about?”

“Your father.”

“You can’t leave him alive, you know that. They won’t let you. If you’ve taken him, then he’s already dead.”

“That would be a miracle, wouldn’t it? Do you know how many damn times I’ve tried to kill him over the years? The pair of you are like cockroaches.” She shook her head, dark hair falling across the shoulders of her tightly tailored leather jacket. 

“Having stopped a few of those attempts, I have a pretty good estimate, yeah.” She glanced over at Ressler. “Sorry about Brussels.”

“Raymond wasn’t supposed to live through that Christmas. Neither were you.” Hannah’s head snapped up at that. “I felt bad for your mother, but let’s face it, she was a pill bottle and a bad night away from death, anyway. But you were always such a self-righteous little bitch of a daddy’s girl, you know that? Mom wouldn’t have ever given you up, but what did I care? All I knew was that she kept crying over him, that she and I weren’t good enough to be a real family because he had you, and I hated you both for that. So when they asked me where to find you, I told them.” She snorted and shook her head again. “Remember how you gave me your real address on a little piece of notebook paper? You folded it into a heart and tucked into my pocket. We were going to be pen pals, you said. Sisters.”

Jennifer reached out and took Hannah by the hair with one hand and punched her again in the stomach. “I never wanted a fucking sister. I wanted a normal life. We were going to have that, after that Christmas. You were all going to disappear, and I was going to have a normal life. Instead, you lived and I got put into the program.”

Hannah gasped as she tried to regain her breath. “So here we are.”

“Here we are.”

“Bit old for the program, weren’t you?” Hannah rasped. “That’s why they wanted the Russian girl, she was the perfect age and had a hell of a pedigree. What did you have, apart from an emotionally unstable mother who wasn’t good enough to be a field agent?”

“Yeah, well, I guess we both proved them wrong. I sold your family, and you shot and killed two men.” She shrugged. “But I don’t need a bargaining chip, Charlotte. I’m just going to kill you. Just like your father, just like little Masha.”

Gunfire erupted outside, and Jennifer’s head whipped around. “What’s that?” she demanded of her men.

Hannah shot Ressler a look, eyes darting to the men holding him. He understood precisely what she was trying to tell him, and he nodded fractionally. Leg bedamned, he wasn’t going to die here. “Cavalry,” Hannah said shortly, and she pitched forward, bringing the two men holding her off balance.

Ressler took advantage of the distraction, and threw his body weight backwards, pulling his own guards off their feet. He got an arm free and grabbed at the knife on one man’s leg. He slammed the blade into the guard’s knee moments before the other one grabbed his hand and struggled to bring his rifle to bear. It was a tense, desperate struggle, but Ressler managed to get his finger on the trigger and pointed the muzzle under his arm, putting a bullet in the guard he’d knifed in the knee. He headbutted the other one and ripped the rifle away, putting him down with the same ruthlessness. 

He whipped around to find the other two guards down and Jennifer gone. “Where is she?”

“Never mind,” Hannah spat, wiping away blood. “Let’s go. Red’s men and Jacob will have this place swarmed in minutes, but we need to find the others. Jacob was supposed to check with Control first before he made a tactical move, but I don’t know how well Baz and Red’s men are playing ball with him. We need to get our guys out before they start confusing friendlies. Alpha to Leader One,” she called through one of the dead man’s radios. “Extract and retreat.”

She watched the radio for a tense moment until it crackled back an affirmative in Turner’s voice. “Come on."

******************************

The thud on the floor and the warm spatter of blood across Red’s face snapped his eyes open. His mind struggled to catch up to what he saw: the dead face of the guard staring back at him through lifeless eyes, blood splattered everywhere from the half of his face that was missing. “Once is coincidence,” said a voice that could not possibly be there, “twice is a habit. I thought you made a habit to not have habits.”

He turned from the gruesome sight to the voice now above him. There she stood, in a sweatshirt and jacket with the hood thrown back, pulling a knife from a hilt that was strapped to her thigh over a pair of black pants. Her hair was shorn asymmetrically, sticking out in what could pass for some post-modern commentary on the punk movement. A fine, gritty dust clung to portions of her skin where she had sweat, and there were scabbed over cuts on her scalp, her neck, and the small portion of skin he could see at her chest. 

Raw knuckles, cheek bruised, lip split. She was setting down the gun with a silencer attached on the floor and bringing out the knife to cut through his bonds. A battle-worn angel of retribution, she had never been more terrible or more beautiful to him. She had him free in seconds, and hauled him to his feet before he found his voice. 

“Lizzy,” he breathed her name like an invocation. His hand cupped the back of her head and he kissed her, hard. He stopped caring in that moment about the twenty-four years that lay between them, about how damned he was and how the darkness of his life would blot out her light. All he cared about was the feeling of her against him, the sound she made when she gripped his shirt in desperate fingers, how much and how deeply he loved this woman.

“We have to go,” she said against his mouth, fingers moving up from the collar of his shirt to touch his face. “Interpol is going to be swarming this place in a matter of minutes. We have to go,” she repeated, pulling back. 

Liz pulled a second gun from the back of her waistband and pressed it into his hands. “There’s a back passage that leads down to the tunnels. We need to move quickly to get down and through them before Pratt gives away their existence. As of the moment, she thinks you’re dead, so she won’t be expecting your escape.”

He pulled himself together and nodded his understanding, pushing aside for now the demanding questions of how in the hell she was here and what exactly was going on. He trusted her. If he trusted no one else on this green earth, he trusted Lizzy. “Were you hiding in the bathroom the whole time?”

“Good thing she didn’t have to pee at any point,” she confirmed, opening the door to the hallway carefully and looking around it. “Though I had to sit through a really badly hummed rendition of that one Edith Piaf song. Talk about torture methods.”

He tossed her a look at the word torture, but she seemed her usual focused self in action, and not like she was coming apart at the seams. She’d already been through one torture session with Luther Braxton, though he knew it had affected her for months. Braxton was nothing compared to Owen Richards. Still, she moved with confidence and not at all gingerly, as though her wounds were merely superficial.

They slid quietly into the hallway and padded down its length to a narrow set of stairs that had once doubled as servants’ stairs. That was what he appreciated most about European architecture; there was always an old stairway or bolt hole or wine cellar. Nooks and crannies everywhere to hide in. Paris and Rome and their underground tunnel systems particularly appealed to him, as did the Aegean Sea and the multitude of tiny rocky islands in which one could disappear from the world. 

Maybe he would take Liz there. Somewhere safe. Just for a little while. Or forever.

They made it down the stairwell and into the tunnels through the hotel’s wine cellar. He followed Liz mostly by sound and sense, as they didn’t risk a light. Her hand brushed his arm a few times, guiding him past an obstacle, or warning him of an upcoming twist or turn. She only had to backtrack them once, cursing quietly under her breath as she did so. 

She froze at the sound of a crunching noise, and he flicked off the safety on his gun. “It’s fine,” she whispered, “I just…” He heard the sound of something like broken pottery and sensed her moving and lifting up a leg. She made a sound half-disgusted and half-horrified. “I stepped on someone’s head, I think.”

“You…”

“Yeah,” she confirmed, her voice coming from lower down as though she’d bent over. “That’s a tooth in my sock. Two teeth. There’s the jaw. Oh, God, that’s the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life. I may vomit.”

“I’m letting you know now that I’m behind you, so you can face the other way if you do. How close are we?”

From her strained voice, it did sound a bit like she was fighting nausea. “Close.” He could feel her give an elaborate shudder. “You know, dead bodies never bothered me as much as old skeletons. I saw this horror movie once as a kid and it just stayed with me.”

“Excellent escape plan, then.”

“I used to not be able to eat chicken that was on the bone when I was a kid. I would pass out. I’m mostly over that, but it’s a good thing it’s dark down here.”

“Lizzy,” he began, then paused before continuing. “What happened to Owen Richards?”

She was silent for several minutes as they continued walking. “Do you really want to talk about this now?”

That was pretty much the only answer he needed. He could tell from her tone that she had killed the man. “Are you okay?”

“Not really, no.” The scuffle of their feet was the only sound while she searched for words. “I stabbed him in the neck with an ice pick. As it happens, I’ve really only got the one move. We’re here, give me your hand.”

She placed his fingers on the rung of an iron ladder. He heard her climb up it and a crescent of light appeared that blossomed into a full circle as she pushed open a large wooden hatch. Hands reached down and pulled her up and a second later she reappeared over the rim and extended her own arms down to him.

He took her assistance and climbed out of the tunnel, eyes adjusting to the light. It was morning. He had forgotten. “Mr. Alleline,” he acknowledged his associate with surprise. The man stood to the side of the cellar with blankets, two travel mugs, and a happy smile. Red hadn’t seen him in nearly five years, but that fussy little face had barely aged, aside from a few silver streaks through the ginger.

Theodore Alleline was a small fellow who smelled of books and wore houndstooth, tweed, and bow ties unironically. He liked umbrellas and trench coats and a finely executed heist. Crime was a chessboard to Teddy, and it had always stuck in Madeline’s craw that Teddy preferred to work with Red than work with her. He was a brilliantly devious little bastard, and Red adored him.

How the hell had Liz found Teddy, and in under eight hours to boot? He looked over at her in semi-wonder as she took the blankets from Alleline and greeted him with familiarity. Red hadn’t realized just how cold he felt until the warm wool settled in around his shoulders and the mug was pressed into his hands. He sipped. It was that brand of simply divine cocoa that Teddy favored, which Red could never seem to find anywhere but in the man’s kitchen. 

“Short drive,” Teddy said in his distinguished British accent. “Then we’ll be out of the city. Garage is this way.”

They followed him through the twisting underground level until a maintenance tunnel emptied into the bottom of an underground parking garage. There weren’t that many of them on record in Paris, and Red knew them all. This wasn’t one of them. 

They were loaded into the backseat of a van, and Red felt a striking sense of déjà vu wash over him. Much like how they’d started this leg of their journey, they now sat side by side in the rear seat, and Liz’s head fell comfortably onto his shoulder. This time, however, he didn’t hesitate in placing his cheek against the top of her head, his arm around her shoulders. He drew her close and she placed a hand possessively on top of his leg. He caught Alleline’s slight, knowing smile in the rearview, but was too exhausted to respond. 

He was alive, Liz was alive, he was holding her in his arms, and right now that was everything he needed. 

****************************

“The boat will take you across the gulf to Mexico,” Hannah explained. She held a bloody cloth in one hand while she gestured with the other. “From there, we’ve arranged transport to a safe house in Columbia. I have some contacts there, for obvious reasons.”

“We’re not going back to DC?” Aram asked, confused. He held an injured Samar tightly, his hand pressed against a bandage on her neck, keeping pressure on a nasty slice that could have severed some serious blood vessels had it been a fraction deeper. 

Ressler shook his head. He had tried, repeatedly, to raise Reven Wright or anyone else in either the Bureau or even Justice. One call had ended with him arguing that his badge number was not a fake, and another had ended prematurely when Ferris snatched the cell phone out of his hands and smashed it on the ground. The call had been in the process of being traced. “We can’t. The cabal has decided we’re not useful and shut down the task force. All trace of our involvement has been erased, and they’re trying to continue that and erase us completely. If we want to survive, we have no choice but to run.”

“Reach out to your Mossad superiors,” Ferris told Samar, “but be careful. They’ve never really gotten a solid toehold inside Israeli affairs, but they control one of the largest arms supply deals. Mossad might decide to wash their hands of you, particularly if they learn about your brother.”

Samar closed her eyes briefly and nodded. “I understand,” she said simply.

“I don’t,” Aram protested. “They can’t just do this.”

“They did it to Liz,” Ressler pointed out. “Before she shot Connolly, they were setting her up and doing a damn good job of it. I even doubted her for a minute. You remember what Cooper told me? They had a plan in place to deal with all of us, they just put it on hold when Liz ran. They figured they’d wait until we scooped her up and then deal with us all at once.”

“They hedged their bets,” Ferris explained. “By hiring me and implanting me into the taskforce, they raised the odds of your success and also had the means to your end already in place. But just in case, they also hired a number of others. Tom Keen, Madeline Pratt, and a man from Johannesburg known as Mr. Solomon. It’s Solomon that Jennifer most likely works with, and the Director.”

“What do we do now?” Aram sounded lost, and Ressler didn’t blame him. “I have a cat,” he added quietly. Samar laid her head on his shoulder in understanding. All the trappings of their normality had suddenly been torn away, and they were now left on their own. 

Except, not entirely on their own. He looked over at Ferris, watched her dab at her nose with the blood-soaked rag. She had removed her tactical vest, and blood caked the front of her gray undershirt, along with sweat and grime from the compound. The rest of them were in much the same condition, even Aram.

“We keep fighting,” Ressler answered. “We’ll work with Hannah’s people in Columbia while Tom Keen makes contact with Reddington’s organization. We’re on the other side of the tracks now.”

“Doing what?” Samar closed her eyes, weary. 

“Doing exactly what you were doing. Finding out the truth buried in Raymond Reddington’s past.” She paused and looked at Ressler for a long moment. He said nothing, waiting for her to make the move. “Look for any traces of the name Clarke,” she supplied. “Raymond Alexander Clarke. He’ll have the same birthdate as Raymond Reddington, the same background and education. The same family. A mother, father, no siblings. A few distant cousins. A wife, and a daughter. You may not find anything. He hasn’t existed for twenty-five years, but if you can find him, any traces of him they may have somehow missed, that’s where you’ll find the truth. When they moved against him, they revealed themselves, however briefly. Find that moment, and we’ve got an opening.”

Hannah’s men appeared and began to guide them to the boat. She stayed behind, and Ressler turned around. “You’re not coming.”

“No.”

He walked over to her. “You didn’t tell them the whole truth. I remember what Jennifer said in there.”

She swallowed. “Yeah.”

They stood alone on the pier, silhouetted against the bright, colorful lights of the island. Morning wasn’t far away. “Raymond Reddington is your father.”

“Raymond _Clarke_ was my father,” she corrected. “Raymond Reddington is the man he was when he was away from us, when he worked with Carla. It’s the man they left him no choice but to become when they came to kill us all.”

“Your mother…”

She looked away. “She was...fragile. They were just kids, you know, practically. I was an accident. Doing what they saw as the right thing meant that she gave up her dream. She pushed me, a lot, as a kid, to dance. To be what she thought she should have been. I never understood her, not really. She was cold, distant. She didn’t know how to communicate her pain, and Dad didn’t know how to deal with it, either. He finally saw how bad it was, and he was…” Hannah paused and drew in a shaky breath. “He was going to get out.”

Ressler reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, but he didn’t stop her. He needed her to be honest with him, he needed to understand these people in whose current he had been swept up. Unwittingly, both she and her father had demolished what he’d built of his life, and if he was going to continue this path, if he wasn’t just going to turn himself in and be damned with the rest of it, he had to understand who they really were. Why had this all happened?

“We were going to buy a farm,” she continued, her voice cracking. “Horses. Down in southern Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. Mom loved horses almost as much as dancing, and Dad always liked them, too. It was an olive branch, a bridge between them where they could meet and start again. I wanted a sister, practically demanded one.” She laughed hollowly. “You know, I was the first one that called her ‘Lizzy’. Little Masha. She was so sweet, Donald. Just this ball of energy and curls and this big smile. I never liked her mother, though. I wanted us to keep her with us, but we couldn’t.”

“You knew Liz before? There always was a connection between Reddington and Liz? She told us she never met him before he turned himself in.”

“Yeah. She was tiny, though. Three or four, I think. I doubt she had any memory of me or Dad, and if she did, they’re likely blacked out by extreme trauma. For her, seeing him that day would have been the first time. When Dad placed her and her mother, something happened. I’m not sure what, exactly. I never could find out the details, but there was a fire and an altercation with her father, whom I thought had gone to retrieve his child, but he didn’t. He had helped assemble a blackmail file, and when Katerina Rostova left Russia, she took it with her. Apparently, she had hidden it with her daughter, and Masha’s father was determined to get it back. Dad was involved, somehow, but again, I don’t know the details. I don’t even know who Masha’s father was. That’s what I need you to find out. We need to know where the original fulcrum came from. We need to be able to help substantiate its information.”

“Do you know anything else? Where the fire was, where your father relocated Liz and her mother?”

Hannah shook her head. “No, I don’t. I wasn’t ever able to find out. I know that he and Masha were the only survivors of the fire. They found her parents inside. Katerina had died of asphyxiation from smoke inhalation and Masha’s father had been shot. That’s all the information I could ever get out of Fitch about it.”

“What is it with you and Alan Fitch?”

For a moment, her expression seemed on the verge of caving into despair, but she took another long, slow breath. “He was...he was the man who saved my life, and then systematically destroyed it piece by piece over the next fifteen years. He tore down every remnant of the person I was and rebuilt something else in its place; something dark, dangerous, and unfeeling. I consider myself a strong person, Agent Ressler, but you have no idea what kind of damage a true master of manipulation can do to your psyche, especially if you’ve suffered trauma of any kind.”

She swallowed, hard. “I was eight years old. It was Christmas Eve, 1990. Dad was supposed to be home with us the day before, but he called to say he just had one more thing to tidy up in Annapolis, and then he’d be home. _‘Before Santa comes down the chimney’_ , he promised me. I stayed up until well after my bedtime, sitting in the parlor and practicing my new piano music I wanted to play for him.” Her voice was soft, distant, reliving the memory in excruciating detail. “Mom finally had it and sent me upstairs, but I didn’t go farther than the landing. I could hear her crying and dumping an entire pot of oyster stew down the sink. Minutes later, two large men broke into our home. Mom didn’t even have time to scream; they were on her in an instant and had her gagged and bound in the kitchen. One of them darted upstairs and grabbed me.

“He bound my hands and sat me down on the piano bench. I could hear the other man hurting Mom, I could see her in the kitchen doorway. He kept hitting her, demanding to know where Dad was. I…” Her eyes moved to his face, drawn back into the present for a moment. “We had these games, Dad and I. Now, of course, I can see that he was trying to prepare me for something like that night, just in case. Mom wouldn’t...she couldn’t handle that kind of thinking, and she would break down if he so much as mentioned danger. Dad had no choice but to try and give me some kind of training, something that would give Mom and I an edge if the worst case scenario happened and he wasn’t there. I used to memorize passport names, their backgrounds. I could speak fluent Russian by the time I was six, and even better French. Some German, some Arabic. Spanish. When I was seven, he and I went for a walk in the woods on a nice summer day, and he taught me how to shoot a gun.”

Tears collected in the corner of her eye, and she wiped at them in irritation. “He cried the whole time, I remember that. He didn’t want me to see it, but I did. He hated it, what he was doing. Hated that I might get drawn into his world, hated that I was so much like him that he knew I had to be the strong one."

“But it worked,” Ressler supplied softly. “You lived.”

“The man, he put his gun on the top of the piano, pointed at me. He wanted to scare me. He kept stroking it, moving it closer, every time I gave him an answer he didn’t like. I don’t even remember what the questions were, I just remember my mom’s muffled cries of pain. After a while, one of the blows to her head was too sharp and it snapped her head back. She fell over in the chair she was tied to and busted her head open on the floor. I remember her looking at me, desperately, and I just sat there and watched the light go out of her eyes as the blood collected under her head. The men started arguing. My hands were small, not easy to tie, and I slipped one wrist free. I grabbed the gun and I shot the first man in the head and the second through the heart without a moment’s hesitation. Dad had told me never to hesitate, that hesitation would get me killed. He also told me to run if something like that ever happened. Run as far and fast as I could, and that’s what I did. I never stopped.”

Ressler stared at her, horrified inwardly, but too shocked to show it on his face. Something floated to the edge of his memory. “The car,” he said hoarsely. “When they found his car, it was covered in snow. There were presents in the trunk. It was out of gas. They always thought he just left, but I remember thinking it was odd that the car was out of gas and the presents were still in the trunk. Carla Reddington never claimed them out of evidence. I had always thought that was odd, too.”

Hannah sniffed, and wiped at the tears that still fell stubbornly down her dirt-stained cheeks. “You’ll have to talk to her about that. I’m not sure why they pushed the Reddington identity so far. Maybe they thought they could corner him with it by making him a fugitive, and they never expected him to embrace their lies and bring the ball to their court with it. I don’t know. All I know is that I ran, and in the middle of a snowy road, where I stood in pajamas and snow boots, freezing to death, a car pulled up with Alan Fitch inside. I think he was supposed to kill me, tidying up loose ends, but he didn’t. There are a lot of times I wish he had.”

“When did you find your father again?”

“Never,” she said, and her voice did break, finally, anguish surfacing in her face. Tears overwhelmed her and cascaded down her cheeks, leaving snail marks in the dust, blood, and sweat on her skin. “I haven’t...haven’t seen my father in twenty-five years. I was too scared.”

He did the only thing he could do when a woman was crying in front of him. He held out his arms. She stepped into them gingerly at first, but then relaxed at least a little when he closed them around her back and held her gently. “Scared of what, Hannah?”

“Everything,” she whispered. “I was eight, Donald. I thought...I had done a horrible thing and I didn’t know how anyone could ever forgive me and I was terrified my father would be angry with me. Later, I thought I was broken, dirty, wrong. I wasn’t a good child, I didn’t deserve a father, I didn’t…” Her forehead rested against his chest and she shuddered, still fighting the tears that wouldn’t leave her alone. His heart, battered as it was, still ached for the girl she had once been, the woman she was now, carrying around this horror inside of herself for over three decades. 

“He never looked for you?”

“He never knew what happened,” she said into his chest. “All he would have found was blood. They had a guy. Fitch had worked with him in the past. He could make bodies disappear. They left hints that’s what had happened to us.”

“The Stewmaker,” Ressler supplied. “God Almighty.” He could still smell the stench of that acid, feel the sting in his nostrils.

“I saw your file,” she replied. “I know what my father did to that man. He wouldn’t have found anything in that book, though. Fitch made sure the man didn’t collect any souvenirs from my mother, and Kornish would never have talked.”

Ressler could imagine the pain, the anger, the vicious, relentless hole in a man’s heart created by losing what was most dear to him and never knowing how or why. Liz had called Reddington a monster for what he had done to Stanley Kornish at the time, but looking back on it now, Ressler found a complete and unexpected sympathy.

He wanted kids. He had talked about them with Audrey, years before. She had tentatively agreed on a maybe-someday plan, but he couldn’t help imagining them sometimes, their children. He imagined taking them–boy or girl, it didn’t matter–to hockey games, to all the museums on the Mall, to the Tidal Basin to look at the cherry blossoms, out to Great Falls to go hiking. He had imagined picking pumpkins in the fall and drawing jack o’lantern faces, scooping out the insides and pretending they were brains to gross out the kids and Audrey. When times were hard, when the hunt for Reddington was at its most bleak, it was this fantasy of the perfect future that he had returned to time and again for comfort.

The death of that dream he had mourned twice, along with mourning Audrey, and each time it had sliced off another piece of his heart and left jagged pain in its wake. How much worse, then, had it been for Reddington? It hadn’t been illusory for him; he’d had his wife and his child and plans for more. It had been his reality, his rock. He had created an entire false identity in order to protect it. And on Christmas Eve, of all times, that had been demolished. 

“Why did you never go to him? Even after you knew what happened?” How could she have let Reddington continue to think she was dead?

Hannah pulled away. “I wanted to. I still want to, you think I don’t? The thought of seeing my father again is the only thing that keeps me moving forward. But it’s dangerous. You’ve seen what they can do, Donald, and I was in with them. They thought they had turned me. For God’s sake, the Director tried to get Fitch to erase my memory, to train me to kill my father as an enemy combatant. I had to play along or I would only take us both down. And if we both went down, so did any hope of ever destroying the cabal. He had the fulcrum, and I was making a new one. If I approached my father at any time, given any indication that I so much as remembered who he was, we were both dead.”

Ressler looked down at her in realization. “The drugs.”

“Oh, we run a small cartel. Marijuana, mostly, in addition to protection and transit, but yes, it’s also a cover. The same way that Reddington’s business covers his own true actions. We’ve both of us been building armies, Donald, and when the time comes, we will strike and be the stronger for our unity. I will see this through.” 

“For vengeance?”

“For justice. I may have a difference sense of it than you do, but I promise you that I do have some semblance of a moral compass. Whatever the cabal is moving towards will shake the very foundation of the world. They defy sovereignty, the notion of free will. I cannot abide that, not while there is air in my lungs. That is my purpose. That’s all I have; my purpose, and my brothers.”

His hand was on her cheek before he realized he had raised it. “Yeah, well, now you’ve got me, too.”

She shrugged slightly and smiled. “Well, at least you’re cute.”

“‘Cute’?”

“Get on the boat, Donald.” 

He raised his hands and did as ordered, but turned around halfway up the gangplank. “Hannah,” he called. She still stood on the pier, watching him. “When we make contact with Reddington’s people…”

She swallowed again, that exaggerated motion when her feelings were too large to speak. After a moment, she nodded. “Tell him his daughter is alive. Tell him you found Charlotte. Tell him I…” Her face did crumple at that, and she looked away quickly. 

“I’ll tell him. Everything.” 

************************

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hands up in the comments if you saw that one coming. I know at least a few of you did.


	12. Theodore Alleline

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a very smutty chapter. Like, whoa Nelly, there's some smut. Get the smelling salts and the fans ready, dear readers, and maybe don't read this if you're at work. I sure hope you're in this for the Lizzington smut.
> 
> There's also some A-level swearing from Liz in places. In her defense, she had a rough night.
> 
> In the perfect casting of my head, Theodore Alleline is played by Toby Jones, as the character is named after Percy Alleline, whom he played in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (man, that movie was good).
> 
> Thank you to figure_of_dismay and deandratb for the excellent beta-work, as always.

_Château d’Azincourt_

_Present_

The chateau was one of Teddy’s recent acquisitions. Red had never set foot in it previously, but every inch of it felt perfectly Theodore Alleline. Rough, pale stone, large wooden mantelpieces, intricate carvings. Sumptuous velvets and tapestries draped the walls, the color palette warm and inviting. Teddy smiled as he hung his hat and umbrella.

“I’m slowly infusing it with good solid English character,” he explained. “My own little conquest of France. That’s why I named it after Agincourt, naturally. Take the eastern wing, it’s all yours. I’ll have refreshments sent up shortly, but for now the bathroom up there is fully equipped with medical supplies, if you can tend to each other.”

“Thank you, Teddy,” Liz said. “We’ll be fine. Let’s meet after lunch?”

“For tea, then,” Alleline agreed, and gave Liz a brief peck on the cheek. He padded over to Red and extended his hand, which Red took gratefully. “Raymond.”

“Teddy, I am beyond in your debt.”

“Pish,” the man responded, waving a hand. “We’ll talk over tea. Go clean up and rest, old friend. I’ve taken the liberty of moving some of your wardrobe here. I anticipated this place’s use a while ago, but then thought it would never come to fruition since you passed on the Venice deal. Yet here we are, and under such circumstances! But, go, let us talk later.”

He shooed them up the carpeted stairs, and when they were out of earshot, Liz slid him a glance and said, “I asked him for a safe house, and he gave us Hogwarts.”

“What on earth did you manage to dangle in front of Teddy to get his cooperation?” Red glanced back down the stairs, but the man had moved from the entryway. “He only gets that excited about a really impossible heist, and I can’t think of a single bank, museum, or casino that we’d be able to provide an in for, currently.”

“How about a government?” she asked, and clarified when he shot her a look, “I may have promised him that he could help us steal the United States government.” She pushed open a door and found a bedchamber behind it, full of antique furniture. When she tested the bed gingerly, she gave a sigh of approval at the soft give of the mattress.

“You promised him that we could steal the US government,” Red stated flatly. “Lizzy, that’s ambitious even for me.”

“I have a plan. Or the makings of one. Or some vague ideas, I don’t know. I can’t concentrate until I get the blood out of my hair and at least four hours of solid sleep.”

He crossed the room and found a door to a large, modern bathroom. “Get a shower, I’ll help you bandage the cuts when you’re through. I’ll see if I can find another one in the meantime.”

She reached out for his arm. “No,” she protested, “stay. I...you can use this one after me, I won’t be long. Just don’t leave. Please?”

He understood. The first cracks in her composure had appeared, and it wouldn’t take much for the flood to overwhelm her. It wouldn’t be good for her to be alone when it did. “Of course,” he agreed.

Liz went into the bathroom, and he waited until he heard the water fire up and the shower door close before he went in and searched for basic medical supplies. The steam obscured most of her form inside the glass, and he wouldn’t invade her time of privacy by looking, tempting though it might be.

She emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of subtle lavender scent, and handed him a clean towel. “Your turn,” she said, pointedly looking at the dirt and scrapes on his hands and arms. He wanted to tend to her, but she was right; he needed to wash first.

Under the hot spray, he tried not to think about the CCTV footage of Liz being tossed out the window, dragged down the alley. He still couldn’t quite believe that they were here, now, that he’d practically been a dead man on the floor of that hotel room and yet had been resurrected. Rescued.

_It’s something of a habit with us, saving each other’s lives._

This wasn’t like that time at the Kings’ auction. There he had created a distraction, given her enough time to escape. He’d been satisfied with that; as much as he clung to his life, if he could save Lizzy, it was worth losing it. Then she had come back for him, negating that sacrifice, disregarding the fact that he wasn’t worth it. That she was worth so much more.

He hadn’t saved her this time, hadn’t even come close. She had done it all herself. He had failed them both, but she had reached down into the quagmire and dragged them to safety. Gods, she was magnificent.

Red toweled off quickly, and then donned the simple pair of trousers and black button-down he’d grabbed out of the wardrobe. His suits, he’d found, were in an adjacent room. The wardrobe in the bedroom held more casual wear, for both himself and Liz. Teddy hadn’t bothered to separate them, clearly expecting them to share a bedroom.

He wasn’t going to dwell on that for the moment. His life was spent half in meticulous planning, and half in understanding that certain bridges would be crossed when they were happened upon and not a moment before. The question of sharing a room was one of those bridges. For himself, he didn’t care; he rarely slept anyway. He would watch Liz and gauge the distance she needed from her reactions.

She stood by the window, looking out over the French countryside with a placid expression. One shoulder of the bathrobe she wore was pushed down over her shoulder, and she held a bottle of antiseptic in one hand while she pressed some cotton to her shoulder with the other. He winced when he saw the nasty scrape on her arm.

“The roof,” she explained. “He got me past security by shoving me out a window onto a roof. Is Mr. Vargas okay?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed, not trusting himself to say much more. If Owen Richards wasn’t already dead, Red would have killed him.

He held out his hands, scrubbed clean, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. She placed the bottle in his hands and gestured to the rest of the medical supplies that lay on a dresser by the window. “All you.”

She turned around, and slid the back of the robe down. Her neck was bruised, and there were some additional scrapes and cuts there. He began to clean them, gently.

*******************************

_Paris_

_The previous night_

 

“Son of a bitch,” Liz swore. She’d lost the trace of Richards’s footprints in the dust. The tunnels were a damned labyrinth, and twice she’d doubled back on his bloody corpse, dead eyes staring at her accusingly. There wasn’t time for self-recrimination, however. She had to get out of here, had to somehow find Red.

She held up the lantern and took deep, even breaths. Or at least tried to in the choking dust she’d stirred up.

Fuck this place. Fuck Paris, fuck spies, fuck her parents, fuck Madeline fucking Pratt, fuck everything.

Right. Breath. Okay. To the left this time.

It worked, and she found herself walking up an increasing incline until she could glimpse a lighter patch ahead of her: the opening of the tunnel where the ambient light of the city shone. The tunnel led into the back of a private mausoleum. I’m in a goddamned Nancy Drew book.

She stopped before leaving the mausoleum and unbuttoned the trench coat. Her dress was in shreds, but she tied what she could of it around herself like some kind of avant-garde fashion statement. At least she was covered. She pulled the trench coat back on and rolled up the sleeves. If she was stopped by anyone, she’d just have to play it off as some kind of punk fashion bullshit or something, Chanel Courtney Love, if she could.

Shoes were a problem. It was cold, and wet. But she either risked frostbite, or risked Red dying before she could get to him. It wasn’t really an option, not when all she could see in her mind’s eye was the day he’d been shot; scarlet ribbon of blood trailing out of his mouth, the darker blood welling up under her fingers, staining her scarf. Frostbite it was, then.

She took the sash from the trenchcoat and cut it in half with a small pocket knife she found in a pocket. With each piece tied around the toes of her feet, she might be able to protect them for a little while, at least.

*****************************

_Château d’Azincourt_

_Present_

“Your feet,” Red said, and she looked down and blinked.

“I’d forgotten,” she explained. “My shoes fell off at some point. I walked a few miles without any before I managed to swipe a pair of boots.”

She lifted up one foot and he winced at the small bloodstain on the carpet. “Sweetheart, sit down,” he ordered gently.

She gave him a wry smile. “If I do, I might not get back up for a while.”

“That’s okay.”

Liz sat in a large overstuffed chair by a cozy little fireplace, and he pulled a footstool over to her, taking a seat on it and pulling her feet into his lap. They were bruised and battered, as though she’d walked on jagged and unforgiving stone for ages. He had no idea how she’d managed to avoid frostbite, but luckily all her toes were intact. Scraped, one nail broken, but intact.

Red cleaned them as gently as he could, picking out a piece of glass or metal where necessary, wrapping them in gauze as tightly as he dared. There’d be a good deal of swelling later. He looked up at where she watched him through half-lidded eyes, exhaustion written in her expression.

Yet still there was something else to her gaze, something he wasn’t sure he could name. Something for which he feared to hope. He looked away and held her feet in his hands, imagining her terrified flight away from a madman through unfamiliar streets.

“I had to find you,” she said softly, and he caught his breath.

“Lizzy, you don’t have to–”

“He told me everything. I had to find you. I knew it was a trap.”

Not a terrified sprint away from danger, but a panicked sprint straight into its heart. For him. He closed his eyes and pressed a gentle kiss to the top of each foot, undeserving of every gift she bestowed on him, but of this one especially.

“Red,” she said, and he felt her hand on the back of his head. “He told me everything.”

It took a moment for the import of her words to sink in. No. Not...not like this. He hadn’t wanted her to find out like this. He knew, the moment she shot Connolly and ran, he knew he’d have to tell her everything. She should have found out from him.

But he had spent so damned long trying to protect her from that terrible truth that he had clung to it. He hadn’t known how to let go and start again with her. How did one find a new purpose when everything had crumbled? He had tried to give her a new life while still arming her against the possibility that they would someday come for her. She was a survivor of their failed initiative, and in the cabal’s business, survivors were a liability. “Lizzy…”

“I understand.”

He clenched and unclenched his jaw, searching for the right words. “I…” He paused, then shook his head slightly. “You are worth more than anything in this world, Lizzy, and that worth comes from who you are, not what they wanted you to be. Do you understand?” He looked at her, finally, and her hand slid away from his face. He reached out and took it in his. “I never wanted you to feel like that was your only value. I wanted you to know that your value was your heart, and no one can ever take that from you.” He swallowed past a burning throat. “I’m sorry. I should have told you, rather than...than this.”

There were tears on her cheeks, but she still smiled slightly. “Yeah,” she said thickly, “you should have told me, but Red, I understand why you didn’t.” She sat forward, sliding her feet out of his grasp. “There are things we’ve both done, unforgivable things, but that doesn’t preclude understanding and compassion. You knew why I shot my father, you didn’t judge me for it based on what I was, what they were...programming me to be. You gave me a chance. You may not have made all the right choices, but without you, I wouldn’t have had anything.”

“Lizzy.”

She leaned her forehead down to touch his, pulling her hand free so that she could cup his face. “Raymond, without you, I don’t have anything now. You may not understand why, but you do need to accept it, because it isn’t going to change.”

With those words she tipped his face up to hers to capture his lips, and it was sweeter than the purest mountain water. He could live on the feel of her alone for the rest of his life. His hands found their way to her thighs, and he moved them up until they circled her waist. She slid off the chair and into his arms, and there could be no better burden than her weight against him. He kissed her, and then kissed her again, and then kept kissing her until neither of them could breathe.

He pulled himself together long enough to open his eyes, reining in his own desire in order to study her. Lips parted, those blue eyes watching him, so full of warmth. He moved a hand up to caress her soft cheek. “Lizzy, are you...do you need…” He wasn’t sure how to ask the question, to care for her needs without making her feel devalued. He had no idea what she’d gone through the previous evening, and he would cut his arm off before he pushed her too far too fast.

She seemed to understand, her expression softening. She turned her head slightly and kissed his palm. “No, I’m fine,” she said. “A little banged up, still in shock, maybe, tired as hell. But I’m...okay. I’ll be okay.” Her mouth returned to his hand, and he inhaled sharply when she took the tip of his thumb between her lips, biting gently on the sensitive end. Desire flooded his senses at the promised intimacy the act imitated.

She noticed the shift in him, and rewarded it with an impish smile that was beyond sexy. She slid off his lap and stood–gingerly, on her bandaged feet–and held her hands out to him. It was an invitation, and for a moment his heart refused to beat, his mind too fogged with long-suppressed desire to understand that this was happening. “Come to bed with me, Ray.”

She bit her lip as he hesitated, and that uncertainty was what did him in. There was no world in which he deserved this, but he would not hold back from her any longer. She was right; he couldn’t fathom the reason he meant so much to her, after everything he had done, but he would not hurt her by pulling back. He had already tried to, repeatedly, and that had failed. He might fail at this, as well, but she was giving him a chance that he would be a fool not to take. What good was his love if he hid it from her?

He stood and swept her back into his arms, kissing her as thoroughly as he could, his tongue exploring every inch of hers, his teeth scraping her lower lip, his hands pulling her closer to him until their bodies were practically fitted together. He moved the kiss lower, trailing his lips along her jaw and down to her neck, her rapid breath and low moan in his ear alerting him when he’d found just the perfect spot below her ear.

He hadn’t realized that her hands had been busy until he felt her fingers against the bare skin of his chest. She bent her head away from his lips and pressed her own just above the surgery scar that was far less angry and red than it had been, despite the events of the previous night. Ellery had sent him away with some of her anti-inflammation herbal concoction, and it worked wonders. The old bat would have been burned for witchcraft in another age.

Red closed his eyes and held still as Lizzy’s kiss moved up to the older scar on his neck, the one she’d put there. She had kissed it before, and that had nearly undone him. Now, when her lips pressed the skin there, he felt as though they had come full circle. Once again she had slain him, but this death was so much sweeter.

He felt her hands on his back, running over the scar tissue there. She moved her lips to the patch of it she could reach on his shoulder, and he realized that she intended to kiss every scar that she felt had been her fault; to replace the pain and soreness with pleasure. A baptism of acceptance and love.

Two could play at that game. As his shirt slid off his arms, he reached for the sash of her robe.

***************************

_Paris_

_The previous night_

Liz had only managed to swipe a handful of change, and had no idea whatsoever which coins were needed for the payphone. With a payphone, at least, she didn’t have to worry about sim cards. She put in a few coins, heard the click, and then prayed the number she knew would still work.

She heard the other end pick up, but there was silence. “Dembe?” she called, crossing her fingers and praying.

“Elizabeth!” Oh, thank God. “What is wrong?”

“Everything,” she said. “I don’t know how much time I have, I know nothing about Euro currency. Listen, there was a set-up, and if she doesn’t already, then Madeline Pratt will soon have Red in custody. They’ll kill him. I was the bait. They were supposed to interrogate and then kill me, but I got away. I need help, and I can’t find Vargas.”

“Raymond sent him on another assignment.”

He had? Where on earth to? “Who do we have in Paris, Dembe? I need help.”

“Find Mr. Alleline, the Louvre.” The line went dead.

Well, at least she had a name. She looked down at herself, bloody and dirty with a tattered silk dress, a too-big trenchcoat, and a pair of snatched rain boots that were a size too small and pinching the hell out of her feet. Not exactly inconspicuous. She had to get dry, get some decent clothing she could really move in. She was no good to Red if she got injured or too sick to think.

It didn’t take as long as she had feared to spot someone roughly her size and shape. She followed the woman down a few streets, until the woman noticed and turned around, frowning at her from under a wide umbrella. Liz conjured her best tears, and a sob-story half in Russian-accented English, half in her broken smattering of French. Something about a boyfriend, being abandoned. Boyfriend’s ex attacked her with scissors, chopped off her hair. She didn’t want money, she had money. She wanted to give the woman money for telling her where she could find clothes. She didn’t know Paris, was lost.

The woman murmured something about the police, but it was a question. Liz tried to look frightened. She wasn’t here legally, she said. The woman told her no place was open this late, and Liz put every effort into looking as dejected and lost as she could manage before turning away to slink into the shadows.

“Wait,” the woman called. “I might have some things that will fit you. Let’s get you dry. Do you want some tea?” Surprisingly, Liz’s stomach growled. She hadn’t put anything in it since a few flutes of champagne at that damned party. Maybe there was a little more truth in her pitiful act than she cared to acknowledge.

There was hot soup, some kind of flavorful herbal chicken concoction, and a cup full of a spicy tea. The woman’s flat was everything Liz would have expected out of a fashionably bohemian young Parisian woman. The woman, Juliette, gave her a pair of black trousers, though refrained from offering her underthings, a gray t-shirt with a cartoonish outline of a cat on it, and a black hooded sweatshirt that had bleach stains on the cuffs. Clearly clothes she was getting rid of anyway, but Liz was extremely grateful for her kindness. Juliette also gave her a pair of warm woolen socks, a pair of gloves, and did some quick cleaning of her more superficial wounds.

In return, Liz left her one of the swiped diamond earrings she’d found in the trench coat. It could be pawned far more easily than anything else in the little pouch full of illicit stones. She left it on the small kitchen table, took one last spoonful of the soup, downed the tea, and then slipped out of the apartment while Juliette went in search of bandages for her feet.

She pulled the hood over her head, though thankfully the rain had lessened, and darted off into the Parisian night. She had no idea what to do once she got to the Louvre, or how to reach this Mr. Alleline once she got there, but hopefully something would occur to her between then and now. The biggest thing was to keep moving, before despair and helplessness overwhelmed her.

This was the first time Red had been in such terrible danger without her having the resources of the FBI behind her to help. She was alone, in an unfamiliar city, hoping against hope that she could locate Red’s people before it was too late.

She had to keep moving.

**************************

_Château d’Azincourt_

_Present_

He wasn’t entirely sure when they had reached the bed, only that they were on it now, and that he was making the best use of it that he knew how. Liz lay sprawled across it, her head bent back and her hands gripping the heavy silk brocade coverlet, twisting it and pulling it various directions in spasms of pleasure.

She had pushed him down onto the bench at the foot of the bed as he undid her robe, straddling him, her thighs on either side of his. The heat of her sex pressing against him through the fabric of his trousers, the way she cradled his face between her hands, the swell of her breasts under his hands...bit by bit, he felt the walls between them crumbling away with each new physical intimacy.

For a moment, he had tried to think of it as only sex, the inescapable attraction of two people who had survived a night of deadly terror and needed the deepest affirmation of life possible. Yet every time their eyes met, he knew that it was so much more, for her and for him. He had fallen, and fallen hard, for this wonderful contradiction of a woman. She was the only person he had ever met that could bring him to his knees, that struck through every defensive layer of himself straight to his core. He had never dared hope for her, but God, how he needed her.

 _Just this once_ , he had thought in that moment of greatest weakness, just this once he would let himself feel it. Let himself feel loved. He had kissed her, hard, and then brought her to the bed, placed his hands on her hips, and let his tongue explore every private inch of her.

“Stop,” she gasped, “please.” Her hands tugged at his shoulders and she pulled him away from his task. He trailed kisses in a path from her abdomen to her neck, pausing again at the corner of her jaw.

She sighed, a light, airy sound almost like a whimper. He had moved his fingers deep into the wetness his mouth had just left, not wanting her to feel abandoned. When he slid his fingers inside of her while brushing his thumb against her most sensitive point, she cried out his name and ground her hips against his hand.

Her hand cupped the back of his neck and she pulled him down roughly for a kiss, growling against his lips as she tasted herself on his tongue. In a heartbeat she had caught him off balance, and turned him over so that he was the one on his back, and her fingers tore at the rest of his clothes, practically flinging them across the room.

She wasted no time with teasing or hesitation, and suddenly he was deep inside of her, her hips meeting his. The groan was out of his mouth before he realized he’d made it, and he reached out for her, his hands caressing her side as she shivered under his touch. He had teased her so thoroughly that it was mere moments until she came, and he reveled in the feeling of her tightening around his cock, the shudders that passed through her body. She collapsed against his chest, and he caressed her back softly, extending her pleasure as she kissed him again, slowly, languorously.

He was painfully hard, and her shudders drove him mad with want, but he held himself still until she had fully come in his arms. Her hips moved in a sensuous motion and he inhaled sharply, his hands itching to grab her by the waist. She lifted her head from his chest and there was a spark of mischief in her eyes that, when accompanied by the slow, sultry smile that spread over her lips, drove all rational thought from his mind.

She moved her hips again in a torturously slow circle, and reached down for his wrists. He let her place his arms above his head, wrists crossed, curious to see what she had planned. She held them pinned in place with her body weight, using his arms as leverage to lift herself up and then back down along his length.

Leaning her head down, she very gently, very delicately, kissed the tip of his nose, then the corner of each eye, and finally his lips. The feathery brush elicited a deep sigh from him, and she captured it in her own mouth with a firmer, more demanding kiss. Her hips moved against his faster now, and he lifted his own to meet her descent each time, pushing more deeply inside of her than he had before.

He closed his eyes and let her take control of him until they could no longer sustain the rhythm with her on top. She let go of his arms, and he turned them over, burying his face into her neck and shoulder as he supported them with one arm. His other hand cupped her bottom, guiding each thrust.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and her breathing accelerated into tiny little gasps in his ear. She arched her back suddenly, pressing her body into his as she came again. The shuddering spasm was more violent this time, and she cried out incoherently. He followed her over that edge without warning, her legs locking him in place as his release spilled inside of her.

They clung to each other, fighting for breath, still joined and holding each other close as the last shivers faded away. He kissed her, deeply, and they parted only long enough to pull down the blankets and slide beneath them. She draped herself over him almost possessively, and was asleep within minutes.

He intended to stay awake, to watch over her, to study her in her sleep, as this opportunity might never come his way again. Yet she was so warm and soft, and the bed was so perfectly cool and crisp that his eyelids drifted down. With a deep, unfamiliar sigh of contentment and his head resting against hers, he slept.

**********************

_Paris_

_The previous night_

 

It was Alleline that found her, as it happened. She had swiped an iPhone, figuring out the lock code by studying the fingerprints on the screen. In what she felt was a clever plan given very little preparation, she pretended to be an American grad student overseas on a grant program who couldn’t remember the name or contact information of the instructor she was supposed to meet. The very helpful clerk forwarded her a .pdf file with contact information for half of the academic and restoration staff at the Louvre.

There was no answer on Theodore Alleline’s office phone, not even a voicemail. Liz tried the number twice more, and then was tempted to chuck the phone across the street in frustration. She’d simply have to figure out which office was his and break in.

Break into the world’s most famous art gallery. Sure.

Fear and despair washed over her as she huddled in a stone doorway out of the cold, driving rain. She was still quite a few streets away, and had been hoping the rain would let up a bit or someone would drop an umbrella. All she knew was that she couldn’t give up. If she gave up now, if she didn’t at least try to save Red, then what point was there to anything? She couldn’t do any of this without him, and she didn’t want to. Red was her strength.

No. Even if she was too late, even if she lost him, she would keep fighting. She would find a way to win.

The rain was so heavy that it dulled the man’s footsteps as he approached, but soon Liz found herself staring at a slight man in a wool tweed suit underneath an enormous umbrella. He held another one out to her. “What color is the sky?” he asked.

Liz went weak with relief and almost burst into tears. “Red,” she replied in a hoarse voice. “It’s Red.”

He smiled and wiggled the umbrella held in the outstretched hand. She took it with shaky fingers and untied the strap. “Come along then, Ms. Keen. I have a car waiting, and you can explain to me what has Dembe’s knickers in such a twist.”

****************************

_Château d’Azincourt_

_Present_

 

He so rarely dreamt any longer that any time he did was a notable occasion. Usually, he was aware of it, when it happened, and patiently let himself go through whatever motions his unconscious mind was intent on going through.

This time, there was no detail, no plot peopled with shadowy figures that were half-real, half-invented. There was a sense of peace, a calm expanse of blueness that he associated with the open ocean. There was bright sunlight. The smell of salt and fish. The whipping snap of canvas sails in a solid wind.

He reveled in the feeling of contentment, the warm swell of love that permeated his senses. He felt himself smiling in genuine joy, even more rare than the dream itself. _Dream_.

Red woke slowly, reluctantly. How much had been a dream? No, he remembered taking Lizzy to bed, quite vividly. The memory alone was enough to make him want to reach for her again, but part of him was afraid to stretch his arm out, to discover her side of the bed cold.

He did, and it was. He opened his eyes and sighed deeply. Good Lord, how long was it going to take to repair this? How had he let it get so out of control? Where had she gone?

“Hello, Raymond,” whispered a soft voice from the edge of the bed, behind him. He lifted his head. Liz sat on an armchair near a window, and the curtain had been pulled back fractionally for light. A couple files and papers were scattered on the footstool and floor. A silver tray stood on a wooden stand, complete with a gleaming silver coffee service.

“Lizzy,” he said, more of his relief evident in his voice than he would have liked.

She smiled at him. “Coffee?”

“Please,” he accepted, sitting up. A warm flannel robe lay at the foot of the bed, and he grabbed it and tied it around himself while she poured a cup of coffee.

She wore a similar robe, he noted, over a silk nightgown with exquisite lace. He recognized it from unpacking her things in the hotel. She brought his coffee over before he could get his feet free of the blankets. “You shouldn’t be walking around,” he chided gently.

Liz tossed him one of those stubborn looks of hers. “Hush,” she responded, sitting down on the edge of the bed and passing him the cup and saucer. He took a few sips, then set it aside on the bedside table. He barely had time to turn back to her before she was in his arms.

He pulled the blankets back over both of them and settled down into the pillows with her in his embrace. Her hands wrapped around his chest, her head cradled against his neck and shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said softly in her ear, “you’re okay now.”

“We’re okay,” she responded, and roughly hummed the first few bars of the _Anniversary Waltz._

“You should get some more rest,” he told her, hand stroking her back gently. “What woke you up?”

“Something’s been bothering me about that file.” She propped her head up on one hand and drew away to a more comfortable speaking distance. “The operative, Hannah Ferris. You called her ‘Persephone’.”

He stilled his hand, curious to see what Liz’s mind had been chewing over. “Yes.”

“Why ‘Persephone’?” she asked. “A young woman stolen from her parent, taken into the underworld by Hades, and by some accounts, she becomes queen of it. But her mother punishes the world in her grief, plunging it into eternal winter, and so Persephone comes back, splits her time between light and dark.”

Red latched on to the relevant words. “Between light and dark,” he echoed, mulling that over. “Interesting.”

“Mr. Vargas brought by her military records, the night of the party. Last night. God, was that all only yesterday?” She shook her head. “Teddy was able to recover all of our things from the hotel; Pratt hadn’t gotten to it yet.”

“Lizzy, I want to hear your thoughts on Persephone very much, but first I want to know how you found me.” He touched her cheek. “I thought I had lost you, lost everything, and then there you were, pulling us both from the wreckage. I never had doubt in your capabilities, but your resourcefulness has outdone even me. How in the hell did you find Teddy, of all people?”

She smiled and kissed his fingers. “Your people care about you more than you think. You value loyalty, but you never really consider precisely what kind of a leader inspires it. I’ve seen you wield fear as a weapon, and there’s no doubt you’re an expert. But Dembe doesn’t fear you, Kate doesn’t fear you. They love you, Red. Their loyalty isn’t born of fearing the consequences, but out of desire to help you. Teddy told me a story last night, about Henry VIII. How his close courtiers used to outdo themselves simply to be in his presence, because being close to him was like being close to the sun. That’s what he thinks of working with you. He’s been on standby with Dembe just in the off-chance he could ever be of use in an emergency. There are others. Dembe has a list.”

Red felt his throat tighten and swallowed past it. Part of him was angry at Dembe for the secrecy, but the rest of him knew that Dembe would do whatever he felt necessary. That was just the sort of man he was. The sort of man he also thought Red was, and perhaps that had been true once, but it had been years since Red felt that way about himself. To have others look at him now and still see that idealistic fool he had once been…

That fool was the one who had gotten his family killed. His sweet little girl, who was so brave, so strong, and so tender-hearted that he couldn’t believe she was something he had been fortunate enough to help bring into the world. He closed his eyes against the pain of her memory.

“I’m not…” He paused, took a deep breath. “You can’t wash away my sins, Lizzy. They’re too many, too deep. There’s been too much blood spilled, most of it by me. I will always be stained with it.”

“We all have our darkness, Ray.” She pushed herself up and then slid one leg over him, pulling off her robe as she settled her hips over his and straddled him. “I always found the end of the Beauty and the Beast story disappointing. She fell in love with the beast and was rewarded with the prince, but why? The beast and the prince were one and they same, why change? If love is acceptance, then I accept the dark, the mud and blood. I want the matted fur and carnage and the dirty, dangerous forest; the gentless, the roughness, the peace, and war. I accept all of it. I want it.”

Her hands caressed his chest as she spoke, pulling apart his own robe. His own hands caressed her thighs of their own accord, his need to feel her skin under his fingers, to prove the reality of this thing between them, it was overwhelming. She licked her lips, then his, then moved a hand between them, touching his length and herself at the same time. “I’m no princess, and I don’t want to be pure. I want to _feel_.”

He lifted her hips and settled her down, thrusting hard inside of her. She grunted and ground her hips against him. Tugging at the silk and lace of her nightgown, he pulled one breast free of it and closed his mouth around her nipple. She gripped the back of his head and moaned as his tongue and teeth did their best to torture her with pleasure.

She rode him with abandon, and he dug his fingers into her backside, her arms, anywhere he could simply hold on to. With her head thrown back and her moaning nearly feral, it felt as though she finally surrendered to herself, to that rebellious darkness in her that he’d always felt drawn to, even when he knew he shouldn’t.

He had never wanted her more than in that moment. He freed her other breast, biting softly and sucking and teasing both with his hand and mouth until there was a constant stream of gasping and exclamation coming from her lips. His other hand caressed and gripped her backside, her ribs, her hips, all through the silk and lace, the pure white softness creating the most enticingly erotic dichotomy with the rutting heat of the woman who wore it.

Her hands gripped the solid wood headboard that pressed against his back, and those hips of hers brought them both to climax nearly at the same time; he came first this time, wrapping his arms around her and crying out against her chest, the soft skin of her collarbone and neck beneath his lips. He reached between them and pressed his fingers into her flesh as she moved herself to push his still hard length against that perfect spot inside, and she came with a shattering intensity.

She lay against his chest, shaking, the pair of them struggling to catch their breath. He was still rock hard; her long, shuddering orgasm and the feel of silk and skin beneath his hands had pushed him past recovery and straight back into arousal. She lifted herself up and looked at him, then slid a hand between them again, her index and middle finger pressing against the base of his cock. That coy smile played across her desire-swollen lips, and she reached down with her other hand as well, arms pushing together those sweet little breasts with their reddened, hard nipples. The straps of her nightgown fell down her shoulders and he groaned her name.

This time she moved with an agonizing slowness, teasing him by lifting her hips up so that he slid mostly out of her. She kept the tip of his head inside, and moved her hands along the base of the shaft. He lifted his hips in response, but her thighs squeezed against his and kept him in place. Her hands moved up to his chest and she slid back down his length, burying him deep inside of her. She leaned down and her lips hovered just above his. “Let go,” she whispered. One hand went back down between them. “Let me love you, all of you.”

She slid him out of her, kept his cock in her hand, and then before he had time to protest, had closed her mouth around it. This was nothing he would have asked of her, nothing he would have expected, especially not with the remnants of both their orgasms still covering him. But, God in heaven, the sheer eroticism of it, as her tongue washed him, consuming the combined taste of their desire...if this killed him, he could think of no better way to go.

He did as she asked, surrendered completely to the desire and pleasure she stirred in him. He moaned her name, gripped her hands as she reached up to him, let himself feel only her and her love. He tried to warn her when he came, tried to lift her head away, but she kept him inside her mouth, and her blessed tongue teased out the most glorious and bone-deep orgasm he’d ever experienced.

She nestled against him, her head positioned just above his surgery scar. It was a long time before either of them moved or spoke, but it was Lizzy that spoke first. “I love you.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, turning onto his side and wrapping her in his embrace, “you shouldn’t.”

“I don’t have a choice, Ray,” she said thickly, “and neither do you. You don’t get to choose who loves you, you just get to choose whether or not to accept it. I’ve already accepted you. I know you love me.”

“To distraction,” he confirmed. “There never was a time that I didn’t love you, in some fashion. This,” he said, with a significant glance at their mostly naked bodies entwined, “was unexpected, but we are complicated human beings. You are irresistible; your mind, your fire, your compassion. Yet you came along so late in my life, Lizzy. You deserve so much more than a broken old man.”

“What we both deserve is someone who will love us without hesitation, who sees the people we are inside the shells of monsters we wear, but accepts the monster as necessary. I don’t give a damn how many years are between us, how many events. I can build a bridge across any chasm if I know there’s something on the other side that’s worth the trouble.” She kissed him, softly, sweetly. “You’re worth the trouble, Red."

***************************

_Paris_

_The previous evening_

Liz tapped her foot impatiently, but tried to give no other outward sign of worry. She didn’t want to alienate the only source of assistance she had. After a few minutes’ fussing, Mr. Alleline had the cup of tea and the plate of biscuits in front of her. He took the seat opposite, and they faced each other over the gleaming oak and brass expanse of his desk, his fingers splayed on an expensive leather blotter.

As he readied a cup of tea for her, he gave her some background information on a former deal between Laurent Dechambou and Madeline Pratt. The deal supposedly involved Owen Richards. “Madeline tried to entice me in on it, but I refused. I know what Richards is.”

“Was,” Liz corrected, accepting the tea.

“Indeed,” Alleline said. “And well done, you. But I don’t mean that he was a monster. He was, of course.”

“You knew he wanted back in the game.” Liz sipped the tea. “How long have you worked for MI6?” she guessed.

Alleline smiled. “All my life, practically. The only reason I’m still alive is my ability to shut up and pretend that I know far less than I really do.”

“So what’s changed? Why help us now?”

“You,” he said simply. “You’ve driven things to a head, and Reddington has launched an all-out counter-attack to buy him enough time to protect you. I’ve always trusted Red; I understand him. More than I think he knows, really. I know who he once was, and I know what they did to him. That’s beside the point, however. What’s relevant now is that, for the first time in decades, you’ve blown open a hole in their defenses. There’s blood in the water, Maria Ivanovna.”

She didn’t flinch at the sound of her Russian patronymic, possibly for the first time. “My friends call me ‘Lizzy’,” she said.

Alleline smiled even wider. “Excellent then, Lizzy. Call me Teddy. Let’s find Raymond, shall we?” He stood and walked out of his office, and to the stairwell of his cozy little rowhouse. “Sarah?” he called up. “Could you come down here for a moment, please?”

Liz turned around and frowned, not having realized there was anyone else in the house. Alleline stood back from the stairs and a few moments later there were light footsteps and a tall, blonde waif of a woman appeared. She was younger than Liz, and seemed frail and lost. Alleline didn’t touch her, but murmured something to her in a soothing voice.

When the woman approached the little study, Liz stood, her eyes widening in shock. The woman’s hair had also been roughly cut; though it was growing out, it was a very pale blonde and Liz could see the pink scars on her scalp. She wore a thick turtleneck sweater that covered her arms, and dark trousers tucked into leather boots, so Liz couldn’t see any other scars.

No, there were a few more that she could see. Long, razor-thin lines that ran down from her eyes to her chin. Sarah noticed her look and touched her cheeks self-consciously. “He told me not to cry,” she whispered in heavily accented English. “Teddy says you killed him.”

“I did.”

Sarah swallowed. “Did he suffer?”

Liz winced, the sound of his screams and her own rough shouts demanding information still echoing in her ears. Richards might have been a monster, but it took one to show her the monster that dwelled in her own heart. It was not a reflection that made her comfortable. “Yes.”

Sarah nodded. “That should help. The bad nights...that will help.”

Liz listened with half an ear while Alleline told her about Sarah. A former assistant to Deschambou, she had been tortured by Richards in front of her boss for information. Richards had later killed Deschambou and left Sarah as a message to Madeline Pratt. “Except, I lived,” Sarah said. “Miss Pratt, she took me in and helped me heal, but then she wouldn’t let me leave. She kept me prisoner, just as he had, even if her prison was more comfortable. She would come to me with food and salves for my cuts and ask me questions, and sometimes her gentleness and fake affection were worse than the way he had cut me.”

“Pratt was using you for leverage against Owen Richards.” Now they had her full attention.

Alleline picked up a blanket and handed it to Sarah, who wrapped it around herself despite the already thick sweater and the heat from the room’s small hearth. “I bribed my guards with sex, the only currency I had left, to get a message out to the person I knew was supposed to be the third partner in the deal. Mr. Alleline came for me, and the guard helped me escape to him, thinking Alleline would pay him handsomely for me.”

“And that payment was a bullet,” Liz guessed. Alleline shrugged elegantly.

“I am not keeping Sarah here against her will, just so we’re clear,” he said. “I have no use for leverage against Owen Richards, especially not now, and I have other, better weapons against Madeline Pratt. She can leave at any time, and with my full protection.”

Sarah shook her head. “Where would I go?”

“Sarah, do you remember the first hotel Miss Pratt rescued you from? It must have had access to the catacombs and tunnels; that’s how Richards prefers to move around the city.” Alleline gave Liz a significant look. “That’s where she’ll be holding Red. They’ll need to get rid of his body, and the Paris catacombs are like the Thames River. Or the Hudson.”

Liz glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was four in the morning. “Do you think we’re too late?” she voiced the question past her fears.

“I don’t know, but I do know Madeline will prolong it, at least for a while. She loved him, you know, wanted to escape the life of crime with him. Tried to, several times, but she always failed. She might move on now, she’s always been a practical creature. But she won’t relish the idea of killing Red.”

“Bring me a map, Teddy,” Sarah said softly. “I will show you.”

“Show Lizzy,” he said, pulling a folded map out of a desk drawer. “I’m going to call InterPol.”

Liz stared. “InterPol?”

“I told you I had better weapons against Madeline Pratt than Sarah.” Teddy grinned. “I’ve been waiting for the right moment to spring the trap on dear old Maddy, but Red was always in the way. If we manage to get him out alive, so much the sweeter my vengeance. We’ll plant you inside, and you’ll get him out before InterPol sweeps the building. Sarah, when you’re done with the map, be a dear and show Lizzy to the gun room.”

**********************************

_Château d’Azincourt_

_Present_

They woke together the next time, and Liz pushed the blankets off, laughing that she needed another shower. He followed her and they shared a moment of intimacy under the hot spray of the shower. He used the excuse that he needed to inspect her for any hidden injuries to run his hands over every inch of her soapy skin. When she swatted him away, it ended in him rinsing soap out of his eyes and five minutes of giggling apology from Lizzy.

He bandaged her feet again once they were out of the shower and dressed. He handed her slippers instead of the boots she picked up, but aside from a moment’s consternation, she didn’t argue. She sat down in the armchair by the window, pulling back the curtains and gathering up her notes.

Lord, she’d driven that completely out of his mind. “What was it that bothered you?” he asked, pulling up the blankets on the bed and laying out two different ties so he could see them in the light from the window. “About her file?”

“You were right, the military history is genuine. Navy Seals. Apparently her entire squad disobeyed orders to retrieve her when she’d been captured behind enemy lines in Afghanistan. The operation wasn’t officially sanctioned; they were supposed to burn any assets that were trapped. Her men rescued her, and nearly all of them were dishonorably discharged as a result. One of the men? Shahin Navabi. According to these records, he was a double agent, working for Iranian intelligence and the CIA.”

Red hummed under his breath. “That’s interesting.”

“I thought so. But what stands out is this Wild Wolves organization you mentioned in connection with Persephone; drug runners, basically. Well, all of the men in Ferris’s squad were nicknamed the wolf pack. I think she created the cartel to get them work.”

“Just because she looks after her people doesn’t mean she isn’t dangerous,” he pointed out, as he finally decided on a tie. He kept trying to break out of his sartorial habits ever since Agent Navabi had pinpointed his preferences and used them to track him, but he simply did not like pastels or paisley. He liked simple, traditional, understated elegance, so the maroon and gold it was.

“True, but it does speak to an interesting pattern. She actually kills quite rarely for someone with a reputation as a wetworks operative. If you trace the deaths she’s responsible for, the majority of them have a connection back to the cabal.” Liz sat back in the chair. “Which is why it kept bothering me; the name. Persephone. That myth. Toeing the line between light and dark.”

She held up a photograph, black and white. “This was in Teddy’s file on her.” It showed a young blond woman on a balcony somewhere in Greece, maybe. Messy hair, big sunglasses, wearing a man’s shirt over a bikini. Behind her stood the presumed owner of the shirt, also with sunglasses and casually dressed in the ubiquitous uniform of a rich man on vacation; white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, giant Rolex, and linen khakis with expensive leather sandals. He wore a straw hat, but Reddington could pick out Alan Fitch anywhere.

“Teddy has files on Persephone?”

“Teddy has files on everyone, apparently. There’s a lot more to that well than a thief who uses his job as a spy for cover.”

“Well, well,” Red said, handing the photograph back to Liz. “I always thought there might be. I’m glad he’s finally come out of his shell. So Alan Fitch was Persephone’s lover in addition to being her handler.”

“Fitch was opposed to the program,” Liz said softly. “He thought it wasn’t sustainable, in the long run, and wasn’t the direction the Alliance should be taking. He was overruled, according to Richards. I think Hannah Ferris was in the program too, Red, and I think Fitch got her out. I think she’s like Teddy; toeing the line until she has no choice but to pick one side or the other.”

He studied her for a moment. “Which side do you think she’ll pick, Lizzy?”

“I don’t know. I think that depends entirely on who she really is, and what she remembers of herself before the program.” She sighed down at the file. “If there were some way we could determine the identity of her family, or anyone she cared about, that might give us an edge.”

A knock sounded at the door, and Red called out for whomever it was to enter. Teddy’s face peeked around the door. “Sorry to interrupt, friends, but I’m glad to see you’re up and about. Would you like some dinner before we have our little war council? Dembe should be here soon, Red. He says he has some important news, but wouldn’t tell me a thing.”

Red watched Teddy disappear behind the closing door, chewing the inside of his cheek in thought. “You look worried,” Liz said. “What’s wrong?”

“The cabal found Jennifer,” he told her. “We believe they were holding her in order to negotiate a trade for you. I sent in some men to free her before Ressler arrived with Ferris’s team. In all the chaos last night, there hasn’t been time to make contact and get a report.”

“Sorry,” she said, glancing significantly at the bed.

“Oh,” he drawled, holding out a hand to help her up, “I don’t regret a single moment of that.”

Lizzy smiled, and it was that warmly flirtatious smile that robbed him of breath. She reached out and finished fastening the last few buttons on his vest for him. Her hands smoothed the fine wool, and he watched her fondly, his head tilted to the side. He reached out and gently touched the short, spiky hair she was left with, and she winced. “I don’t even want to see what it looks like, do I?” she asked.

“You are beautiful, Lizzy. You could never be anything but beautiful.” He touched her hair again, avoiding any areas where there were cuts or scrapes. “Sure, it’s a little uneven, but that’s an easy fix, and you’ll look very chic and French. Vargas would approve, I’m sure. Or we can get you some wigs, if you like. Whatever you feel comfortable with, I’ll make happen.”

He moved his fingers to her cheek, caressing the soft skin there and brushing away a small tear with his thumb. “What he did to you was unforgivable, but you are not diminished by his actions. He left scars on others, tried to dim the radiance of women because it frightened him. Do not diminish yourself for such a creature, Lizzy. You are beautiful, and radiant. That light comes from your heart, your mind, your soul, and there is no way they can ever cut into those, no matter what anyone ever tries to do to you.”

She touched her forehead to his, and took a few deep, shuddering breaths before getting a hold of herself. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped away her tears. “Come, love,” he said softly, “we’ve kept dinner waiting.”

She took his arm and they left the bedroom suite, whispering a thank-you as the door closed behind them.

************************

 

TBC 

(I swear to God, I am totally going somewhere with this.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I warned you about the smut!


	13. The Wolf Pack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to figure_of_dismay and deandratb for the beta work. 
> 
> I started adding location tags, as the story bounces around quite a lot. I thought this would help. At some point, I'll probably go back through previous chapters and add location tags. I'm too lazy right this moment, however.
> 
> A bit shorter than the last chapter, I think, but there's lots of recovery and set-up. We get to touch base with a few characters we didn't see last chapter.

_Medellìn_

_Columbia_

“So where is she?” Ressler asked for what had to be the twentieth time.

Taylor eyeballed him over the rim of his coffee cup. “Man, do you know what the definition of insanity is?”

“Pretty sure I’m living it, yeah.” He pulled out a chair at the table and sat down, reaching for a muffin. The estate was nestled in the highlands around Medellìn, with beautiful, spring-like weather and stunning views. It was nothing like he’d ever expected of Columbia, and the simple elegance and luxury made him extremely uneasy.

This wasn’t a hotel, and he wasn’t on vacation. He kept trying to think about how he could have done anything differently, how he might not have landed on the wrong side of the law, but there was nothing. He hadn’t done anything wrong; he had done his job. That was it. The only way this could have been avoided, maybe, was if he traced his steps back far enough to the moment when he let Liz escape.

After she shot Connolly, he had felt that moment to be one of weakness, where he had let his feelings for Liz override his judgement. But was it, really? He knew in his bones it was a set-up, just as he knew that the only person capable of really helping her in that moment was Reddington.

Ressler had stood at the window of the room given to him–it was too early to start thinking of anything here possessively–last night and stared out into the darkness of the jungle. Rainforest? Or just...forest? He wasn’t sure. There were a lot of unfamiliar animal sounds.

As he watched the night, he dwelled on why he had let Liz run to Reddington, why he had been so sure it was a frame job. It seemed so far-fetched a plot on paper, but there was a pattern. All the cases. The blacklist of Reddington’s...it all had a deeper pattern. Liz had spotted the initial connection to Berlin, but there was more to it than that. Reddington had been showing them, case by case, just what exactly people were capable of that was beyond their knowledge: dissolving bodies, changing DNA evidence, manipulating biological weapons far beyond what was known. Reddington had wanted them to know that these people were out there, that he wasn’t the only one who knew about them.

He wanted them to be able to see the pattern in the event something like this happened. He was exposing the cabal and their methods bit by bit without alerting his enemies that he was doing so. Reddington had taken the task force to the river and taught them all how to fish.

Taylor set aside his coffee and leaned forward. He was a lean, rugged, tan man in his early forties. He had that indefinable skin tone and set of features that could speak to any number of different nationalities. Taylor was the type to blend into a crowd, the man you didn’t notice until the knife was already in your side. When he spoke, it was with that clinical American English that marked him as being from the West Coast.

As he sat at the breakfast table in a white shirt and khakis, glasses perched on the end of his nose as he read a local paper, he looked even more dangerous than he had in combat fatigues. Or maybe Ressler was simply learning a different method of threat assessment, after dealing so long with Reddington.

“I don’t even know your first name,” Ressler mused.

Taylor tilted his head slightly in acknowledgement. “It’s Alex. Listen, Agent Ressler–”

Ressler put down the muffin, untouched, a sick weight in his stomach. “Let’s just go with Don. Or plain Ressler. I’m apparently not a special agent any longer.”

Taylor nodded and sat back. “I understand.”

“You do,” he said flatly.

“I was a soldier, Donald. I was ROTC in high school, excelled in my service during the first Gulf War, and transferred after into Special Forces. I was a patriot, through and through, a career Navy man. I was top of my class again in Seal training, and let me tell you: you may have seen the movies, but you have no idea how tough that shit really is.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “My service was my life.”

Ressler cocked his head, intrigued by the parallel between this man’s background and Reddington’s. “What happened?”

“Black ops mission went south. We were sent in to assassinate some key targets in an Al Qaeda supply chain, and to extract our inside-source, as the heat had started to turn up for him. Drug-runners, mostly, and some arms-dealers. The finances. The area was a death trap. The entire thing had been engineered to tip off the other side to the identity of our guy. The man had discovered some information that was damaging to US Intelligence services.”

Taylor refilled his coffee from the electric percolator that sat in the middle of the breakfast offerings. Most of the food was an American-style breakfast, with chafing dishes of sausage and bacon, eggs. Every now and then a petite woman with long hair done up in an elaborate bun and huge pink plastic hoops swinging from her ears sauntered in with another armload of food. She clucked at Taylor, winked saucily, and commented in a steady stream of Spanish about her boys getting enough to eat. Taylor called out his thanks to her couched in colloquial endearments

When she had retreated back to the kitchen–or so Ressler assumed, as he had no idea where anything was in this place–Taylor took a sip of his coffee and looked outside. The room was open to the air, the exterior wall made up of arches rather than windows, the fresh smell of nature drifting in.

“I’ll tell you,” Taylor continued, “it chapped my ass a bit to be under the command of a girl ten years younger than me, but I gave her a chance and she proved herself to be one of the most competent leaders I’d ever worked with. She can read people well, assess their strengths, and use those to the team’s advantage. She’s also a hell of a tactician; apparently her father taught her to play chess at age four.”

 _That_ Ressler could believe. He’d seen how Reddington’s mind worked, and if the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree...

“But the real thing? She fought for us.” Taylor sat forward and looked at Ressler. “I figured it out: we were all supposed to die, the twelve of us. We were evidence. They couldn’t be sure what our source had told us or not, and so we were supposed to die in the extraction. So was he. They had tipped off his home service to his nature as a double agent.” He shook his head in disgust. “Some shit went down. Ferris and our source...they had kind of a thing. He got to her, in a way I don’t think she knew she could be gotten, if you understand. She’s this hardass, who pretends she doesn’t feel pain, but she’s just gotten used to it.”

He sighed. “Anyway, she went in after him, and they made it look like he was buying off his life in exchange for hers. It looked so good, even we fell for it, and I knew the plan. We were supposed to go, too. Ordered to remove when the higher-ups saw their operation go pear-shaped. We disobeyed, and we went in after her. They discharged us, cut us loose, and I think they had every intention of making sure we all disappeared.”

“But she protected you,” Ressler guessed.

“Yeah. Managed to buy our lives off somehow. She had a contact on the side of the angels, as she called it: your man, Harold Cooper. He’d been neck-deep in some of our ops. I think she threatened to leak some operational details out through him, maybe. Or she was really convincing about using us to set up her own enterprise. She had enough cachet in her little group to pull it off, enough protection from Alan Fitch.”

That made sense. Ressler sighed and picked at the muffin. “You trust me enough to tell me all this?”

Taylor shrugged. “What are you going to do about it? Arrest me? I just want you to know that I understand what this is like. I couldn’t believe it all, either. I still feel it, you know, the loyalty. I still feel like an American, still think of myself as loyal. But I’m loyal to an ideal that never really existed, or if it did, it was hijacked by these assholes who sit around in darkened board rooms and plot across borders, ignoring the will of the people. I don’t want to be protecting Afghani pot-growers and selling their weed for the rest of my life, man, but right now that’s what I have to do to live. That’s what we do to protect ourselves until the day comes that we fight back. That day’s coming, Donald, and soon.”

His words brought home a truth that struck Ressler deep in his chest. Everything he loved, everything he valued, it was all tied together with his identity as an American. Those fleeting glimpses of his dreams: the house, the kids, the wife, the trick-or-treating, the Fourth of July fireworks, the cookouts, the neighbors, the long, lazy summer road trip vacations out to some cabin in the woods, the fishing trips, the pride.

When he was six, he remembered getting lost at an amusement park. He had wandered off, distracted by the shouts coming from a colorful, looping roller coaster. When he turned around, there was no sign of his family, and he could still vividly recall the absolute panic that had enveloped him. There he was, surrounded by everything wonderful to his six-year-old mind, and all he wanted was to find his parents and go home.

God, he just wanted to go home.

“We haven’t made contact with Reddington’s people yet,” he said, the roughness of his voice betraying more of his emotional turmoil than he would have liked. “I feel like I’m spinning my wheels, here.”

“You are,” Taylor replied. “But you should at least finish your muffin, or Sophia will be angry.”

Ressler took a bite. “So, where is she?”

Taylor laughed. “Ferris is her own master, man. I don’t know where she is.”

**********************

Aram took four wrong turns before he finally tracked down the room he’d left Samar in the previous night. He balanced the box of medical supplies in one hand and knocked gently with the other. She opened it, and then turned around and shuffled back into the room without saying anything.

He followed her in and set the small box down on the unkempt bed, watching the silent Samar with concern. She was a secretive sort of person, but he finally felt like he was getting to know her, a little. Her air of dejection seemed out of character.

She took a seat on a small padded bench by one of the big arched windows in the room, the glass panes pushed open to let in the fresh air. Photographs were strewn over the bench, some arrayed on the floor around her feet. A stack of files and paperwork perched next to her.

Samar’s eyes were red-rimmed, her hair a halo of frizz and curls, hastily tied back from her bandaged neck. A livid purple bruise shadowed her cheek, and when she looked up at Aram, tears made it glisten in the morning light.

He spotted a chair at a small writing desk, and pulled it over opposite her. She handed him one of the photographs as he sat down. In it, a tall, handsome man with a classic Persian brow and nose stood in generic battle fatigues with a scarf around his neck. He had his arms crossed and was casually leaning against a jeep, deep in conversation with a tanned blond woman in similar fatigues and a pair of shades. The woman he recognized immediately as Hannah Ferris.

Samar pointed to the man. “That was my brother,” she said softly. “Shahin Navabi. My baby brother, the poet, the sensitive artist. I have books of his drawings. He was brilliant, and I always thought, you know, like so many artists...I thought he was delicate. He always seemed that way. Distant, withdrawn, but so gentle and sweet with his family.”

Aram looked up at her and then back down at the photograph. ‘Gentle’ and ‘sweet’ were not words he would generally associate with someone that had an assault rifle thrown over their shoulder. The rest of the photographs also contained Shahin Navabi in some way or another, he noticed. “Is this why you were meeting with Ferris before?” he asked. “Back in DC?”

“It’s why I’ve done everything. It’s why I helped Mossad go after Reddington, why I then worked with Reddington to get onto the taskforce. My brother was killed in a bombing, and information linked Reddington to the man responsible, but it was false. He gave me accurate intelligence in exchange for insinuating myself into the task force.”

“You were his inside agent?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “I only fed him information when it directly related to Elizabeth Keen’s safety. He didn’t need an inside agent for other things. You know his intel was always better than ours. But as Keen started to distance herself from him, he worried more for her safety.”

Aram handed her back the photograph. “Samar...did you kill that Iranian agent?”

She looked at him steadily. “Which one?”

“I guess that’s as good an answer as any.”

A sigh escaped her and she looked away. “I’m more like him than I care to admit. More like Reddington, I mean. I don’t particularly like him, but I understand him. I’ve crossed the line more times than I should have, but the truth is that I don’t have regrets, Aram. I should be a better person, but I’m not, and I’m at peace with that.”

He watched her profile and thought about how little he could really understand of her life. Aram sat back in his chair and sighed. “Samar, I bake cupcakes. I own a cat. I watch a lot of Netflix, sometimes I play video games where my opponents are generally thirteen years old and think the word ‘balls’ is hysterical. I like to cook, I keep my apartment neat, I write letters to my mother every week. I build robots to battle against other robots when I feel really bored.” He ran a hand through his hair. “That’s my life, up until this task force. That’s what I did. But I guess everyone has what they’d consider a normal life until the time it goes off the rails. All we can do is try to make the best decisions we can under the circumstances.”

He leaned forward again and reached out for her hand. She placed it in his, hesitantly. “The man you killed, the Scimitar. He was behind the bombing that killed your brother.”

“Yes,” she said. “But he may have had reasons I didn’t know about. I…” She swallowed and cleared her throat. “I have spent these past years turning myself into this angel of furious retribution, defending the memory of an innocent, beautiful artist cut down before he could leave his mark on the world. I turned myself into a monster to protect such innocence.”

He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “Is that why you won’t let me near you?” He stood and removed some of the photographs from the bench, taking a seat beside her. “Protecting innocence is laudable, Samar, but don’t put people on a pedestal. You only lower yourself doing that. Were there civilians killed in the bombing?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“You’re not the monster, Samar.”

She shook her head. “Just because someone else does something worse...that doesn’t absolve my guilt.”

Aram held his arms open and she slowly leaned into him, still struggling to let go of the barriers she’d put up around herself. He held her gently, as a friend would, because that was what she needed. “No, it doesn’t. But you can’t let that eclipse the rest of you. There are no heroes and villains, Samar, there are just people and varying degrees of justifications.” He sighed again, against her hair. “It’s easy to believe in God’s laws when you’re a child, but then you grow up and you see so many transgressions go unpunished. It’s difficult to not want to act, to sit placidly on the sidelines.”

“And you start to think you should deliver God’s justice yourself,” she said hoarsely. “That’s how monsters are made, Aram.”

“God’s justice is man’s justice. Who writes the laws? We do. There’s a commonality among all people, a need to be better than what we are, a need for a parental guidance long after we’ve supposedly outgrown it. Maybe that drive inside us does come from a higher power, maybe it doesn’t, but it’s there. Its shadow is selfishness, putting an individual’s needs and desires above that drive to be better and help the whole. It’s a constant line that everyone walks, trying to balance between those two halves of ourselves, and it’s not clearly defined. We’re all guilty to some degree, Samar. We all carry burdens. That doesn’t lessen the weight of yours or make it insignificant, but you aren’t alone. You’re not a monster, you’re just a human struggling to find that boundary again.”

He ran his hand gently over her back as he spoke, and she started to relax into him. Finally, the last reserve broke and she began to cry; painful, broken sobs were torn out of her and she clung to Aram as though he was the life-saving branch in the river of grief she had drowned herself in. He just held her, finding his own solace in offering it to her.

The words, he realized, were as much for himself as for Samar. All his life, he’d felt that drive to help, but never really felt himself capable of it. He buried himself in computers and achievements, in math and science, but took the comfortable job instead of pushing innovation. His family wanted him safe and happy, and he put their wishes for him above that little voice in his head that urged him to do more.

As he held Samar, he looked down at the pictures of her brother and wondered if Shahin had felt that same urge and given in to it. An artist turned spy. A spy turned double agent. It was a dangerous game he had played, and one that had claimed his life in the end. Had he done it simply for the thrill? Money? Or had it been, at the time, the way he could best serve that urge to do better? To do right?

If Shahin had been anything like his sister, Aram felt he knew the answer.

******************

_Château d’Azincourt_

_France_

 

It was a surprising amount of relief to see Dembe’s familiar silhouette outlined by the parlor window. He had always been courteous to Liz, but a special bond had developed between them the day Red had been shot. Dembe had never blamed her for it, though she felt he could have.  It was her fault he’d been out in the open like that. She hadn’t wanted to meet inside; she had needed to feel like an easy exit was possible should his answer about Tom be what she feared.

Tom. Liz sighed, inwardly, as Red stepped forward to greet his close friend. She had lain awake earlier, jolted back to reality from a half-remembered conversation that had infiltrated her dream. Red had fallen asleep, their positions shifted in the large bed so that his head was resting just below hers on the pillow. She had rested her cheek against the fuzz of his neatly clipped hair and listened to him breathe, her hand on his chest.

Tom had tried from the start to keep Liz from Reddington. Even after his cover was blown, Tom still kept warning her away. Why? Maybe it was part jealousy, maybe it was some protective instinct. But if that were the case, then why, after everything that had happened, why hadn’t Tom simply told her everything he knew?

 _You’re my greatest failure as a profiler_. She had continued to fail. Continued to not look at his deeper motives because she had wanted to believe in him, in his redemption. If she turned that analytical eye on herself, she could see clearly that it was pure ego and need on her part. She had wanted to believe that there was something in Tom that wanted to change, and that something was because of her. She had wanted to believe that she was worth that.

But no one had ever looked at her the way Raymond had. The way he looked at her, held her, touched her, surrendered to her completely...to touch the heart of someone, to accept each other without wishing or hoping for change was a revelation. It made her realize that all of the time with Tom, even while he was giving her everything she thought she wanted, she had still felt empty. There had been bits of fulfillment; just enough crumbs to keep her coming back to the table and hoping for more.

When Raymond held her, told her that her value came from who she was, not what she was to others, that had been the first time that she had really, deeply, believed it. _I have never lied to you_.

He had found some measure of redemption in his love for her; she could feel that, sense it under his words. Tom had wanted redemption through her love for him, which she just...she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t cleanse anyone of their sins. There were too many of her own. That was maybe something Red was now realizing, as well. Their redemption, if there was any to be had, would be found together.

Lord, what a tangled mess her life was. But at least now she had started to glimpse the path through it, had a place to set her feet. This was, as he had said, unexpected. She would hold on to this gift, this light, and ward off the darkness with it as long as she could. If it disappeared, she would at least know the way to move forward, even if she had to learn to breathe and live without a heart for a while.

Dembe stepped forward to greet Liz and she smiled at him. “It’s good to see you,” she said, and meant it.

The mountain of a man clapped a gentle hand on to her shoulder. “It is even better to see you,” he replied. “Are you well, Elizabeth?”

“Yes. A little shaky, but yes.”

Dembe nodded and dropped his hand. “If you need to talk, I can listen.”

She understood what he was really saying, the compassion that he was offering, and marveled at the strength of the man’s character. For empathy and goodness to have survived what he had survived was extraordinary. “Thank you, Dembe.”

Teddy entered with a bottle of port and several small crystal glasses, a wooden cigar box tucked under his arm. He set it down with a flourish. “I can’t abide the things,” he said in a stage-whispered aside to Liz, “but Red always seems to plan better if he’s holding onto something noxious and phallic.”

“Jealousy doesn’t become you, Teddy,” Red commented, clipping off the end of a cigar and handing it to Dembe. He glanced at Liz out of courtesy, but she shook her head minutely.

Alleline snorted and poured the port. Liz watched as Red clipped the end off another cigar, then hesitated over lighting it. The last time she remembered seeing him indulge that particular vice had been that speakeasy, when she’d confronted him about Sam. That was likely the source of his hesitation now.

Sam had wanted to die, he had told her. That was probably true. She knew her father, knew how damned stubborn he could be. Had Sam threatened to tell her the truth knowing that Red would do anything to protect her from it? She knew, looking at him now, that it didn’t matter if she ever forgave Red for killing Sam. Red would never forgive himself. That was one sin he would carry to his grave.

If he hadn’t gone there, if it had been Liz at her father’s bedside, would Sam have told her anything? He didn’t even tell her about the cancer. But if he’d told her that he wanted to die, would she have had the strength to help him do it? Or would she have drawn out his life, his pain, because she selfishly needed to keep him with her?

She didn’t know the answer to that, didn’t particularly want to think about it. She watched Red pick a chair and sit, with the cigar still unlit. There were still wounds between them, places where they had cut and scratched each other; him with secrets and silence, her with anger and verbal strikes. The wounds were healing, though, and this wasn’t a scab she intended to pick at any longer.

She picked up a glass and sat next in the chair next to his, squeezing his free hand briefly as she did so. Dembe tossed a quick glance between them, but Teddy didn’t react. She felt sure he had already put two and two together when he found her near tears in the pouring rain, alone on a Parisian street in the middle of the night. And if he hadn’t then, he sure as hell had by now. Liz wasn’t sure how well sound would carry through this fortress, but she hadn’t made any effort to be quiet.

Red placed the cigar aside, leaning it on the edge of a gilt ashtray, though it was still unlit. He sat forward with his arms on his knees, fingers steepled. Dembe hadn’t lit his, either, simply tapped a finger against it in an uncharacteristic show of unease. Liz could see a small twitch in Red’s cheek, and realized that he was bracing himself for bad news.

“We did not recover Jennifer,” Dembe said bluntly, evidently deciding to rip off the band-aid.

Red looked down at the floor, nodding slightly as though he expected such news. “Carla?”

“Mr. Vargas reported that she’s safe. The husband was the source, as you suspected, but things are more complicated. As near as we can tell from the information Mr. Brimley has gotten out of him, Highland wasn’t approached by the cabal, but by a man we know is associated with the remnants of Berlin’s organization. He’s the one who threatened Highland’s daughters. He was working with the information gleaned by Lord Baltimore. Berlin had evidently been working towards tracking down Jennifer, but switched to your wife when he couldn’t find your daughter.”

Red shot her a look before nodding, and she barely had time to brace herself. “Tom Keen,” Red acknowledged. “Agent Navabi has been shadowing Hannah Ferris. Keen was Ferris’s source. He sold out Jennifer twice: once to the cabal in exchange for not tracking down Liz, and then again to the task force in exchange for his own life. Enterprising, I’ll admit,” he added bitterly.

Liz closed her eyes. “How long?” She swallowed again. “How long after Berlin’s death was Tom taking control?”

How long had she fallen for his lies again?

“We’re not certain,” Red said gently. She felt the feather-touch of his hand on hers. “Definitely since his return from Germany. Possibly longer.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Why didn’t you… No, I can answer that. You didn’t tell me because it would hurt me. But if you knew he was setting himself up as your rival, then why…?”

"Why did I allow it?” he guessed. “Partially because killing Berlin left a power vacuum, and his people weren’t especially amenable to a deal. With Keen, I had at least some idea of what was going on. It’s not my habit to leave enemies at my back, but he was a lesser problem considering the other power vacuum created by Alan Fitch’s death. The cabal is the most urgent problem.”

He wasn’t looking at her, which she’d found to be indicative that there was more to the story. “When he stayed,” she said slowly, “when he tried to…” she trailed off, her mind flashing back to that terrible day that she’d shot Tom by accident, when he’d held her as a hostage to protect himself from Red. He saw her stop Red from killing him, well against Red’s own judgment. Red’s trust in her, his affection for her...Tom had driven them just far enough apart to insert himself, but not far enough that he couldn’t benefit from her protection.

Red turned his face back to hers, and she saw confirmation written in his expression, in the concern and the brightness of his eyes, the tension of his jaw that told her there was a host of words he wasn’t saying. His fingers still held hers, and she squeezed them again. “I’m sorry,” she said thickly, swallowing down her own frustration and hurt, “I’ve gotten us off-topic. Dembe, what about Jennifer? Do you have any idea where she is?”

“No,” he replied. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but we’ve also lost contact with the task force. Ferris must have anticipated Baz, or one of the agents tipped her off. They moved up the invasion timetable before Baz was in place.” He reached down and pulled a laptop out of a bag that had been sitting on the floor. “Baz found some security camera footage from the pool house on the Kings' compound. It’s likely they didn’t know about it; it was a hidden unit set up inside what looks to be the shower area.”

“Bless perverts for being predictable,” Red commented wryly as Dembe set up the laptop near him.

Liz sat forward and watched the footage along with Red. It was surprisingly good visual quality, but there was no sound. She watched a man being half-carried into the room, his arm slung over the shoulder of a smaller figure supporting him. The shorter figure dumped the larger unceremoniously on a bench, and pulled off their helmets. The taller was Ressler, without a doubt, gripping his leg and grimacing in pain. The other figure shook out a blonde ponytail and shrugged out of her combat vest. Hannah Ferris.

They watched Ferris work quickly and methodically to patch up a wound on Ressler’s shoulder and then bind up his leg. There seemed to be something of good-natured banter between them as Ferris motioned impatiently at Ressler’s pants and waved a bandage at him. When the tone of the scene shifted abruptly with Ferris pulling out her weapon, Liz sat forward even more.

Figures swarmed the edges of the camera’s field of vision, and she watched Ferris give up her weapon. Another woman walked in, and even though the glimpse of her face as she turned around was brief, Liz started in surprise. “That’s...wait.”

“Jennifer,” Red supplied, his voice laced with confusion and surprise. “She always looked exactly like her mother, even as a child.”

On the screen, two men took hold of Ferris, and two more took hold of Ressler. The woman they’d ostensibly been sent to rescue then proceeded to beat Ferris thoroughly. They appeared to argue, and Ressler struggled against his own captors in an effort to help Ferris. Whatever they said surprised the hell out of him, and he stopped struggling to stare at Ferris in shock.

Something outside the camera’s range startled Jennifer and her men and Liz watched with some sense of satisfaction as Ressler and Ferris took out their captors. Jennifer left swiftly, and moments later Ferris scooped Ressler’s arm back over her shoulder and the two of them escaped.

The footage ended, and Liz looked to Red. He reached forward and scrolled the footage back, pausing it on the best view of Hannah Ferris’s face. He stared at it, intently. “Lizzy,” he said softly, “does she look at all familiar to you? Do you think you might have seen her somewhere before? Nebraska? Or college, maybe?”

“If the dates in Teddy’s file are accurate–”

“–of course they’re accurate–”

“–then we wouldn’t have overlapped at college or any of the training courses I went through. I took a couple years to figure out what I wanted to do after I graduated, so she would have been behind in me in college and then ahead of me in training. That’s assuming we even did the same courses, which I don’t think is true. Besides, I didn’t go to Princeton, I went to Hopkins. I know evidence can be faked, but I’m fairly sure from what we have that Ferris was actually at Princeton.”

“There’s nowhere you think you could have met her or spoken to her?” Red rubbed his chin.

She frowned at him. “Why?”

He stared intently at the frozen footage, then shook his head. “Something she said that Agent Navabi repeated to me. I suppose it can’t be too uncommon a thing, but outside of you and I, and Sam, I’ve never heard anyone say it. The Invisible Man.”

“Aunt June used to tease Dad about being a ladies’ man, but I can’t imagine him having a kid and not knowing about it or taking responsibility.” She looked at him. “You know more about his criminal past than I do, though. She’s too young to be an old associate of his, but maybe she’s someone’s daughter or niece or something.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. “Or maybe I’m grasping at straws and it’s not even related.”

“You tend to trust your gut, though,” she pointed out. “And your gut’s usually right.”

“Except about that last helping of coq au vin,” he drawled, shutting the laptop lid and handing it back to Dembe. “Teddy, I simply must have the recipe.”

He lit the cigar and leaned back casually in the seat, his face a mask of amiability. Liz watched him for a moment, but then followed suit. They’d speak later, if he still wanted to talk about it. Otherwise, she could recognize a subject change when she heard it.

“So this is an interesting little wrinkle,” Red continued. “We need to speak to Carla,” he said to Dembe.

Dembe nodded his agreement. “Vargas is on his way with her. Alone. What do you want done with the husband?”

Red’s jaw twitched, and Liz knew exactly what he would prefer to do with Frank Highland. “I think that will probably depend on what Carla says,” Liz suggested. “You relocated them together; she must be attached to him, even after all of this. We can maybe use that to our advantage. If you kill him outright, and she knows about it, she’ll clam up. She strikes me as the kind of person who simply won’t negotiate if there’s nothing in it she values. Even if it’s for her life, she won’t cooperate unless she sees some possible value in continuing to live that life. She’s had it swept away from her three times now, and will be heavily desensitized and difficult to interrogate, especially if she thinks speaking will put her daughter at risk.”

She paused, realizing that nearly everyone was staring at her. Dembe’s expression showed a mild surprise that, for him, was akin to downright shock. Teddy sipped his port and smiled at her as though he were getting ready to witness a prizefight.

Red hadn’t reacted, simply listened. “Agreed,” he acknowledged. The two expressions of surprise swiveled to face him.  “But don’t allow Brimley to let him get too comfortable. Tell Vargas we’ll meet him in Lisbon.”

********************

_Stuttgart_

_Germany_

__

Music still pumped out from the refurbished jukebox in the corner, and Jacob Phelps winced as he pulled the plug and cut off the sound. The bar was empty save for a few corpses and a great deal of blood. All around him, the remnants of _Die Entrechteten_ lay in peace...and occasionally, in pieces.

He sucked on his cheek for a moment in thought, and then sighed. “Damn.”

Moving into the room with the pool table, he spotted Elias. The former leader of this merry little band of racist rebels, drug-dealers, and mercenaries was stretched out on the table, a broken pool cue sticking out of his neck. He’d been sliced open, victim of his own signature mutilation, the blood eagle.

Footsteps fell behind him, but he recognized the sound of Jennifer’s heels. She handed him a bottle of whisky, and he took a swig. “I think it’s fair to say Charlotte knows you’ve been a bad boy, Jacob. Or Hannah, or Nikki, or whatever you’re calling her these days.”

“I’m pulling my organization out, Jennifer. I’m not getting into the middle of this war.”

She wrinkled her nose in distaste as she surveyed the slaughter. “It’s a little late for that, my friend.”

He clenched his jaw. “We’re not friends. We’re not allies. I only did what you asked to protect my wife.”

“Your wife,” she repeated flatly. “The wife you’re not actually married to because she had it annulled? The wife who’s on the run with, and probably in bed with, Raymond Reddington?” She pulled a handful of photos out of her jacket and handed it to him. “This wife?”

He took them, reluctantly, and then closed his eyes for a moment in pain. They were stills of security camera footage, from a hotel room. Reddington, on the floor and tied to a chair, with a gun to his head. Liz, cutting him free, standing next to the body of the man she killed. Liz, pulling Reddington to his feet. And finally, Reddington and Liz locked in a very passionate kiss.

Jacob swallowed past a tight throat. He’d known it. Their chance had passed, if it had ever really existed. He had wanted to believe it so badly, but he never really had. That was why he’d hedged his bets and gotten in with Berlin’s people. Partially to protect himself, but also to gather resources so he could protect Liz against Reddington. But a part of him knew, even as he was doing it, which of them Liz would really choose in the end. Reddington held too powerful a sway over her life.

He looked back at the photos and noticed the cuts, the bruises, the dirt. Her hair… “She wasn’t supposed to be harmed.”

“She wasn’t supposed to be a lot of things, Jacob, but here we are. They’re both on the kill list; they’re too dangerous.” She took back the whisky bottle and consumed a generous swig.

He knew an unspoken ‘unless’ when he heard one. “What’s the deal?”

“You’re going to use yourself as bait to bring her to me. I want information. If she survives the process, you can have her back.” She set the whisky bottle down on the pool table, next to Elias’s face, frozen in death with eyes wide and mouth twisted in horror. “And I want you to kill Charlotte Clarke, but I want you to do it in front of him.”

Jacob frowned. “In front of who? Reddington? What is she to Reddington, and what did your father do to make you hate him that much?”

Jennifer looked at him, and shook her head. “Oh, he’s not my father. He’s hers.” She glanced at her watch, pointedly. “Best get moving, Jacob, or you’re not going to have much organization left by the time Charlotte’s through killing everyone.”

He watched her leave in disbelief, and then slumped against the pool table. He ran a hand over his face.

“Shit,” he told Elias’s dead eyes, and then he picked up the whisky.

*******************

TBC

 


	14. Donald Ressler

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A deep thank-you to my betas, figure_of_dismay and deandratb. 
> 
> *I stole a set piece shamelessly from episode 3x02. I only mention this so that you don't think I came up with it, should you happen to read this before seeing the episode.
> 
> A special dedication in this chapter to redlipstickandserenity on Tumblr, who could use something special in her honor today.

_Medellìn_

_Columbia_

  
  


“Wow,” was about all Aram could manage as he surveyed the room. “You’ve been busy.”

Ressler shrugged and sipped at his coffee. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“This looks an awful lot like a command center,” Samar commented from the doorway.

He looked over at her and set his mug down on one of the tables he’d dragged into the room. It was an extra formal dining room which sat generally unused, so Ressler had taken it over. One wall was covered entirely in notes, with strings connecting various pieces together. He’d cobbled together everything from memory, and thankfully his memory was excellent.

Samar walked forward to look it over, and then took a folded photograph from the back pocket of her jeans and added it to the wall. “My brother,” she commented. “Shahin Navabi.”

“So he was Ferris’s informant in Afghanistan, the one she compromised her mission to save.” Ressler looked at her. “He must have been a hell of a guy.”

“I only know that he was my brother. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.” She accepted a mug from Aram as he came up to join them. “This is amazing,” she added after taking a sip.

“Sophia’s chocolate,” Aram explained. “I’ve got a platter of her arepas de huevo, too.”

Samar took one of the arepas from the platter and bit into it, grunting in surprise as the runny egg began to drip down her chin. A few muttered curses and a hastily fetched napkin later, she returned to study the wall. “Okay,” she said after a moment. “I’ll bite. Where do we start?”

Ressler pointed to the index card he’d pinned to the center of the wall. It had still been in his pocket; he had transferred it to his tactical uniform in case something occurred to him on the plane ride to the Caribbean. It was a little worse for wear, but the writing was legible.

_Trigger words._

“Hannah could tell us more, but there’s something here. When Jennifer confronted us, the two of them were arguing over something they called ‘the program’. Whatever it is, they wanted Liz for it. I’m not sure if that’s because of her parents or some other reason, but given what we know of Katerina Rostova, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was about genetics. We don’t know who Liz’s father was, but whoever he was, Reddington felt it was too dangerous for Liz to know.”

“How do you know that?” Samar asked, frowning.

Ressler crossed his arms and leaned against the large wooden table. “She told me, once. It was a few beers in, and I think she regretted revealing that much of her interaction with Reddington. Between him and Tom, she was wound in all these knots and didn’t know which way was up, but she kept trying to tell herself that she could handle it alone.”

Samar refrained from comment, but raised her eyebrows. “Liz was my partner,” he said firmly. “And she’s still my friend. I’m not going to justify caring about her to you, or to anyone else.”

Aram had set the platter down and approached the board. He cocked his head. “All these independent covert operatives,” he mused. “I wonder if they’re all connected, somehow. The Major and Tom Keen, this Sub-Project Seven…”

“What are you thinking?” Ressler asked.

“I don’t know,” Aram said, frowning at all the paper. “I’m good at seeing patterns, but sometimes the patterns aren’t actually there.” He flexed his fingers. “I need access.”

“To what?” Samar sipped at her chocolate.

“Anything.” Aram turned around. “I can plug into anything with internet access and get where I need to go. We need data.”

“I can probably help with that.” All three of them turned to find a small, stern-faced older woman standing in the doorway. Her voice was like gravel, and she peered at them over the top of her wire frame glasses. She was impeccably dressed in a cream suit and carried a dark red leather handbag that matched her heels. “My name is Mr. Kaplan. You can call me Mr. Kaplan. Tell me, Mr. Mojtabai, have you ever been to Morocco?”

 

****************************

 

_Lisbon_

_Portugal_

 

Liz ran a hand over her now-short hair, still getting used to it. The last night in France, she had stood at the mirror in the bathroom with a pair of sharp scissors, trimming it up herself. Red had stepped in and evened up the places she couldn’t reach, and then perfected what she had started. “I like it,” he had told her, brushing the excess hair trimmings from her shoulders, “it’s...fierce.”

“I feel a little unfeminine,” she’d told him. “But I think that’s okay.”

The kiss he pressed to her bare neck had sent the most delightful shivers down her spine. “I think you should feel like you, and disregard the adjectives.”

“For a man of such classic elegance and taste, you’re mighty progressive.”

His arms had enveloped her into a warm embrace from behind, and in the mirror she’d watched his eyes study her face with affection. “I’ve seen a lot of the world, Lizzy. People love to erect all sorts of barriers between themselves, but the universal truth is that people are people anywhere you go. Feminine, masculine, foreign, straight, gay...they’re all just words, labels for neatly defined boxes that no one really fits into. A lot of pain is caused by forcing people to adopt those labels, to define themselves by only one set of adjectives. Why force people to exhibit only one part of their nature when the whole is so much more compelling?”

She sipped at her coffee and took another bite of the deliciously flaky croissant (which was, she had to admit, better than the one she’d had in Paris). Lisbon was beautiful, with that old-world Mediterranean charm everywhere. At first, the choice of location had confused her, but then she’d realized that Lisbon had one of the largest container ports in Europe. What little she knew about Reddington’s business had to do with shipping, so it made sense.

Should she ask about it, she wondered? It felt odd, despite the intimacy between them now. They were so close in so many ways, and had been for so long; their lives entwined and tangled on this twisted path they walked through life. Yet there was this side of him, the side that ran a criminal empire and wielded an enormous amount of power and influence–and that part was practically a stranger.

Not entirely so, to be fair. She had abhorred his coldness, his calculation, at first, but then as events progressed she began to realize that it wasn’t dispassion. It was simply commitment. Once he chose a course of action, he never wavered. He considered his options, mapped out routes, and then tore through the path he had chosen without hesitation. It was what made him so deadly and terrifying.

And recognizing that quality in herself hadn’t sat well with Liz, at first. It still didn’t sit well with her now, but she was learning to cope. She had done the things she had done. There was no going back, so it wasn’t worth considering.

The object of her thoughts appeared and joined her at the little wrought-iron table on the pavement. He looked every inch the dapper criminal this morning in his precisely tailored, lightweight linen suit. The upscale wardrobe had traveled with her from France, and she’d taken advantage of it that morning, so at least she no longer felt out of place beside him.

Maybe that’s what was troubling her. She had adjusted to him almost completely, after so much time spent rebelling against those feelings out of fear. Now, without that barrier, she felt both free and yet panicked at the same time. There was a tendency, she knew, to lose herself in the people around her, to let them define her. It would be easy to let that happen with Red, to let his personality consume her and allow herself to become not only his lover but his criminal protégée.

So, no, she wouldn’t ask him about his business. If he wanted to tell her, that was fine. But otherwise, it wouldn’t concern her unless it overlapped with what she now considered her mission. That would be her boundary.

“Good morning, Lizzy. You look stunning, yet slightly uncomfortable.”

“I am terrified that I’m going to spill coffee on this pale cream suit that probably costs as much as I used to make in a quarter,” she said wryly. “Yes, I realize that doesn’t matter, but that didn’t stop me from almost buying a fashion magazine just to sit on.”

“You aren’t going to spill coffee on it,” he chided. “You’re not that clumsy.”

She raised one eyebrow. “You don’t understand about me and coffee and the strange coffee-specific magnetism of any clothing I happen to be wearing.”

He gave her a delicate shudder. “I understand plenty about you and coffee. How much sugar did you put in that?”

“Coffee’s supposed to be grainy, right?” She grinned at the noise of pure disgust he made, then set down the Portuguese paper she’d been pretending to read. “I should apologize,” she said softly.

He helped himself to a piece of her croissant. “Apologize for what, exactly?”

“I stepped on your toes a little, before we left France.” She opened her mouth, unsure of how to continue the explanation out in the open, but then Red nodded in understanding.

He wiped his fingers on the napkin provided and folded his hands on the table. “Lizzy, my toes are well able to withstand some treading, especially from you.” He looked at her with that one expression of his, head cocked to one side. It was fondness, affection. Admiration. Words she had been afraid to ascribe to him before. “I trust you,” he added simply, and the depth of emotion behind those words told her everything.

It wasn’t easy for a man like Reddington to give up any amount of control or power, but he had. That’s what love is; being powerless. She sipped her coffee, noticing the lipstick she’d chosen had left a faint ring. The path his eyes traveled from the cup to her mouth told her that he’d noticed the deep, plummy wine color that was outside her usual color range.

To be fair, everything about her right now was outside of her usual range: the expertly tailored cream suit, the short hair, the makeup, the thin gold earrings. She’d played around with the hair, managed to make it look edgier and cooler than she’d thought it capable of...and then she sat there drinking her coffee and worrying that she looked like a teenage boy playing dress-up in Meryl Streep’s cast-off suits.

Red’s lingering visual caress of approval assured her that wasn’t the case. This persona of the chic, laid-back rich was simply one she wasn’t comfortable with, yet. She had played the part in that green silk dress in Paris, and that hadn’t ended well for her. “You’re not obligated to wear the clothes, sweetheart. I’m sure we can find something more to your taste.”

“I like them,” she protested. “I just feel...exposed? I’m not sure that’s the right word.”

“You feel like you should be wearing a hood, or a hat, or anything else that you could use as a method of hiding your face. You want to hug the shadows, not sit in the sun and sip coffee. Yes, I think ‘exposed’ is the correct word.” He picked up her discarded paper. “That’s good. It will keep you aware, and staying aware means staying alive. But don’t let fear rule you, Lizzy. If there’s a sniper on top of that building over there and this moment is your last, do you want to spend it slinking in the shadows, or sitting in the sun with me?”

She let his words sink in. It was similar, she realized, to what Mr. Vargas had told her in Paris. There was no better master at truly living in the present than Red. Liz reached over and held her hand out, and he took it in his, smiling at her over the top of the Portuguese paper. In this moment, she could nearly believe the fiction that they were merely a rich couple on vacation, spending a lazy morning in Lisbon.

This was all uncharted territory, but Red was a savvy navigator, and like he pointed out, she had good instincts. Her instinct with Red had always been to trust him, to want to be near him, even as the rest of her rebelled against that strange magnetism. Her heart had recognized him even when her mind hadn’t.

Heart and mind...something pricked the edge of her consciousness about those words, an idea, half-formed. She frowned, trying to grasp at it, but it eluded her. “Do you have a business card? And a pen?”

Red glanced at her, and pulled both items out of his pockets without questioning why. She turned the card over to its mostly blank side–it was a generic card, she noticed, for an alias, and the number undoubtedly led to Dembe–and wrote down heart, mind, recognition. When the ink dried, she tucked it into the pocket of her trousers and handed the pen back to Red. He tilted his head, curious.

“A trick I learned from Ressler,” she explained. “When something is bothering me, but I can’t put a finger on it, I tend to focus too much. I lose the thread of thought, look too hard for a pattern that doesn’t exist. This is a way to sort of keep it on the mental back burner without losing it. Every time I sit down I’ll feel it poking at me; every time I change clothes, I’ll switch it to another pocket and have to look at it.” She shrugged. “He tends to follow a path single-mindedly, sometimes, and has a hard time breaking out of the box our training puts us in; he thinks too much like a cop, with all the preconceptions that implies. But when he relaxes and trusts himself, he’s a hell of a detective.”

“You’re worried about him,” Red stated.

She sighed a little. “I’m worried about all of them.”

He nodded. “I’ve put Mr. Kaplan on it, though she may never forgive me.” When she frowned in confusion, he added, “I sent her to pick up Glen Carter. He’s the tracker I told you about previously.”

Tracker? Oh. “The guy from the DMV?”

His cheek twitched in annoyance. “That’s the one. Noxious little fellow and a giant pain in the ass, but he’s brilliant. He’ll find them, Lizzy, if he hasn’t already. The little nightmare works painfully slow for me, but Mr. Kaplan has a way of being...motivational.”

He pulled a ringing cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. After a moment of holding it up to his ear, he murmured, “Understood.” Closing the phone, he looked over at her. “They’re here.”

Her stomach clenched, the brief respite in the sun over. She had to face the shadows of her past now, and part of that was revealing to Red just how much she knew. In all the adrenaline and recovery, she’d barely had time to process it all herself. She kept getting stuck on what she’d done in order to obtain the information. She had tortured someone. The man might have been a monster, but that didn’t change her own actions or excuse them.

Red sat forward and perched his elbows on his knees. “Lizzy,” he began, then hesitated. He sighed, then continued, “We’re likely only going to get one good shot at this.”

“I understand. I’ll hang back. She knows you; that trust might work.”

He turned his head towards her, and behind the pale lenses of his sunglasses she could see his eyes scan her face. “No,” he replied, “I’d like you to do the opposite. You’re right; she knows me. She thinks she knows everything about me. But you? You’re the unknown. She’ll have some preconceptions based on your previous meetings, and your mother. Beyond that, however, you have the upper hand.”

Liz mulled it over for a few minutes, aware of the trust Red was placing in her, and her abilities. It wasn’t merely a bone thrown to assuage her need for answers; she had the answers she had fought for now. There was a gesture inside of this, an extension of partnership and equality, but Liz knew Red well enough to know that he would not have offered if he didn’t also think it was the right move.

“She knows my weakness,” Liz replied. When he raised his eyebrows in question, she answered, “You.”

He looked down at his hands and threaded his fingers together. “I was her weakness once, too.” He lifted his head and shook it slightly. “I knew she had feelings for me. I wrote it off for a while; she was single, lonely, had a daughter to take care of, and here we were in this fictional relationship for cover. It’s easy to blur lines between fiction and reality when the fiction is so close to what you really want.”

That was something she could certainly understand. “I still don’t know if those feelings ever really ran deeper, or if she simply convinced herself that they did,” he continued. “I made the mistake of getting too involved in her life, in Jennifer’s. I pulled away when things started to get...complicated. I don’t know if she ever forgave me for that.”

“Were you lovers?” she asked, mildly surprised that she felt very little jealousy at the notion. He had been young, in a troubled marriage. It wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d had a moment of weakness with a beautiful woman who wanted him.

“Nearly,” he replied. “Very nearly, but no.”

Liz thought briefly of the tender way he had made love to her the previous night; the agonizingly slow caresses and deep kisses. It was, quite possibly, the best sex she’d ever had; he was generous, considerate, and curious. His enjoyment of her pleasure made giving it to him even more erotic and intimate. Every loss of control, every involuntary moan or gasp that she managed to elicit from him drove her ever deeper into desire.

Had there been no emotion involved between them, or very little of it, she still had a feeling the sex would have been fantastic. He was just that sort of man; attentive to detail, confident without the need for machismo, and focused on the present, not the payoff. It was easy, then, to become attached to such a man, to become possessive. She had felt stirrings of it long before she even acknowledged that her feelings ran so deeply.

In all likelihood, Naomi Highland still felt that pull, that possessiveness, to some degree. She had built a fantasy around Reddington, and fantasies–as Liz knew well–were terribly difficult to banish. They were easy to turn to, in times of peril or loneliness or stress; they were a perfect alternative that seemed to offer comfort, but only made reality that much more difficult.

If Liz could make it all about Red, and not trigger the woman’s maternal battle instincts, then it might work. She might be able to exploit any jealousy or disbelief. Liz was, after all, a good number of years younger than Red and Naomi. To a certain type of woman, there was nothing more threatening or loathsome than a younger, prettier woman.

Red was watching her, a small smile playing around the corner of his mouth. “What?” she asked.

“Watching your mind work is quite possibly one of my favorite activities,” he responded.

“I’m not sure how you made that sound as sexy as you did, but it’s impressive.”

He let out a low chuckle. “It’s not difficult when you’re the subject. Are you ready?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

 

*****************************

 

_Medellìn_

_Columbia_

  
  


“And you believe her?” Mr. Kaplan asked, arms crossed lightly, standing at the window.

Ressler leaned against the heavy dining table. He glanced at the doorway, relieved that Samar had offered to help Aram pack for Morocco. He should have told them everything he’d heard from Hannah, but somehow, it hadn’t felt right.

He realized, at that moment, that it was already too late for him; he’d jumped over the line headfirst. He stood inside a mercenary compound, protecting a woman who was a trained assassin and rogue covert operative. Or at least, that’s what it would look like from the outside, to anyone who came looking for him. They wouldn’t see the men behind the guns, the lives manipulated until they could only eke out an existence on the fringe of society. They wouldn’t see the survivor, the incredibly brave woman behind the rogue agent.

Just like the world saw Liz as a terrorist and a Russian spy, not as a once upstanding law officer who had been set up, harassed, and pushed to the very edge.

“Yeah,” Ressler replied. “I believe her.”

She merely raised her eyebrows expectantly. He slid off the table and picked up the light jacket Alex Taylor had lent him, reaching into the pockets. He found what he was looking for and tossed it to her.

Mr. Kaplan caught the little plastic bag with ease and looked at the blood-stained bandage inside. “Good boy,” she commented.

“I expected to have access to our files in ViCAP, where I have Reddington’s DNA sample on record” he admitted, “but maybe you can figure it out.”

She tucked it into the pocket of her thin trench coat. “I can.” She sighed and looked around. “This is a lovely little spot, dear boy, but if Glen and I can find you here, the cabal can find you just as easily. There’s only so long Persephone can run interference. We need to figure out our next move.”

“Hannah believes that whatever happened that Christmas Eve in 1990 is the key. Why did they go after him? I’m assuming that part of the story is correct, at least–he lost his family that night; that’s why he disappeared.”

“Yes.” Mr. Kaplan shrugged slightly, frowning. “He was a threat.”

“From what I heard, it sounded like Jennifer was the one to give up their names, their address. She said that Carla wouldn’t, but she didn’t care what happened to the family. She wanted them all dead.”

Kaplan winced. “That will hurt the most,” she said softly. “Raymond was a great father, and he loved children. Things were complicated with Carla, the lines too blurred between personal and professional, but he always worried about Jennifer. He hated the fact that she was dragged into the spotlight when he disappeared.”

Ressler shook his head slowly. “You know, all this time, I assumed at least half of Reddington’s former case files were destroyed by Red himself in an effort to protect his identity. But that doesn’t really hold up, does it? Reddington doesn’t like collateral damage; he always operates with precision.”

“They didn’t want to leave him any path back to his former life.”

“They also didn’t want to leave any evidence within his grasp,” Ressler pointed out. “That blackmail file, the fulcrum...Liz was the one who had it. I’m guessing her mother made it, or stole it, and hid it with her.”

“Partially,” she admitted. “The truth is more abhorrent. Suffice it to say that her parents never won any awards when it came to actually being a parent. Ray was responsible for the relocation of Katerina Rostova and her daughter, but he was pulled into the middle of a very vicious war between Katerina and the cabal.”

He frowned. “But is that enough to target a man’s family? And on Christmas Eve? That’s a cold, calculating move. Whatever pot he stirred, it was bad enough for them to risk the possible murder of an innocent woman and a child. They couldn’t leave any trace, either; if they did, if there was any digging at all into who they were or what had happened to them, they’d stumble onto Red. And by unearthing information on him, the investigation would invariably expose whatever truth the cabal wanted hidden. So they not only had to eradicate his family and all trace of them, but also all trace of Red himself. Or Raymond Clarke, as it were.” He scratched his chin. “When Clarke disappeared, they used the Reddington identity to try and force him out into the open. To salt the earth, as it were, so there would be no place for him to hide.”

Mr. Kaplan leaned against the window and nodded. “Very good, Agent Ressler.”

“I’m not an agent any longer,” he pointed out, and then froze as the truth occurred to him. “The state secrets, the information that was leaked back in 1994–those were what got him on the radar in the first place. He wasn’t responsible, was he? It was a setup, but he used it to his advantage rather than panic.”

“He’s always been resourceful. When they took him down, there were a lot of us–informants, mostly–who fully expected to go down with him.”

“But he protected you,” Ressler guessed.

“Value loyalty, Mr. Ressler.”

He heard the message underneath it, the question of his own loyalty. This conversation was an olive branch–would he take it? Throw in everything he had left and join forces with the man he had long considered his greatest enemy? He could try to fight this, he supposed. Return to DC and push for his reinstatement, try to clear his name.

But then what? Continue to uphold the law, be the good boy scout, when all around him the law was being subverted and ignored? He had gotten into this business to help deliver justice, to protect and serve. He still believed in that, in the ideals behind his work.

Ressler remembered a family vacation they’d taken when he was around nine or ten. They’d just moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, from their former home in Missouri. He’d hated it; no one knew anyone else, neighbors didn’t talk to each other, and he couldn’t walk anywhere because everything was in isolated little enclaves of pavement and strip malls. His father had packed up the car, and they took a special little road trip down to Williamsburg, in Virginia, where they had that little Colonial village.

He’d come back from that trip happy as a clam, with a fife and drum and a little felt tri-corner hat. So in love with his country’s history was he that he no longer hated his new home, but felt a sense of pride to live so close to the capital city. He knew he would stay there, work there, be a part of it.

He had viewed Reddington for a long time as a modern day Benedict Arnold, and that little fife-playing boy in him had taken it personally. The truth, however, was always more complicated. Ressler could see now the man that was simply trying to survive, refusing to give in, choosing to thrive and grow in the darkness into which he’d been pushed. And now Ressler was at that crossroads, himself.

But Reddington wasn’t a general heading an army. He might topple kings, but he wouldn’t lead the charge. That wasn’t how he worked. He was the spymaster, not the soldier.

“Mr. Ressler, you look like a man who’s having ideas. There are few things I hate worse.” Mr. Kaplan stepped towards him, abandoning her post at the window. “What are you thinking?”

“Not thinking,” he corrected, “planning.”

“Planning what?”

“A revolution.” He picked up his jacket and shrugged it on. “Do you know where Harold Cooper is, and can you get me in touch with him? Aram and Samar are going to go to Morocco with you, but Cooper and Ferris and I need to touch base with Red and Liz. Can you arrange that somehow?”

She stared at him. “Mr. Ressler, are you giving me orders?”

He gave her his most charming smile. “No, simply asking a lovely young lady if she would be so kind as to–”

“Oh, can it, kid.” She took his arm. “I know where Cooper is. As for the rest, I’ll see what I can do.”

 

*********************************

 

_Lisbon_

_Portugal_

  
  


Red could feel Dembe’s questioning stare on the back of his head while he poured a cup of tea. The pot was a lovely example of hand-painted Portuguese ceramics, and he allowed himself a moment to admire the skill involved. He had tried painting once, during a self-imposed exile in Malta while some Interpol heat died away. It had ended with lots of cobalt blue under his nails and an image of lopsided flowers that were streaked with the remnants of the Scotch he’d accidentally spilled on it. He called it ‘portrait of a man dying of boredom’.

He’d had much more success learning to play the violin. With that, at least, he’d been able to annoy the hell out of people he didn’t like. There had been one memorable visit from Fitch, where Red had struck up a scraping note every time the man opened his mouth to speak. Sometimes, he genuinely missed Alan. The devil he knew was far easier to deal with, particularly as he was the moderate voice of the cabal.

Things were progressing rapidly, and even after a quarter of a century spent hunting, he was only slightly closer to understanding the endgame.

Red poured another cup of tea for Dembe and handed it to him. Dembe accepted it silently, balancing the saucer and cup in one hand. They took seats on the plush, overstuffed furniture, Dembe’s long frame making his chair look like it was meant for a child. “My mother used to love jigsaw puzzles,” Red mused. “My father hated them, but my mother would sit for hours at her little table by the fire, patiently putting pieces in place. I remember one evening, she was so frustrated at not being able to find the place for this one particular piece. All evening, and most of the morning, she focused solely on that one piece to the exclusion of everything else. She went out for the day, and while she was gone, my father–who, by that time, was heartily sick of her sighing over the puzzle–put the entire thing together, save for that one piece. When she got home, he pointed at it and told her that at least now she knew where it fit.”

He sipped the tea. “Sometimes we get too close to things, Dembe. A fresh set of eyes and a different perspective are powerful tools.”

Dembe nodded in understanding. “I reached out to some former acquaintances in Kigali,” he said, changing the subject. “Something about Teddy’s files on Dr. Ferris seemed familiar. There’s not a lot of information on Ferris’s early work, but if she is who I suspect she is, she was essentially a _kadogo_. That is the Swahili term for–”

“A child soldier,” Red finished for him.

“Yes.”

“That was the goal of the program the cabal tried to implement in the late Seventies and early Eighties. A heightened state of patriotism bred into select operatives from early childhood. It had a healthy dose of eugenics mixed in, and some psychological mumbo-jumbo that amounted to little more than mysticism. It really boils down to abuse and torture, and unfortunately, those have always been effective methods. The problem lies in handling the child soldier once they’re no longer a child.” He frowned. “When would she have been active in Rwanda?”

“During the early years of the refugee crisis,” Dembe said. “In the Bukavu province of what was still Zaire. I was not there, but I trained under several former and current RPF officers, and they told stories. There is little a soldier likes more than stories that are part war, part ghost, and the wars offered plenty of material for such tales. One of the popular stories was of some U.S. Intelligence operatives in the refugee camps, masquerading as relief workers. A woman and a child were the most commonly mentioned, particularly the child. A girl, young teens, blonde.”

He did the math quickly. “She’s only a few years older than Lizzy, so that would have made her around twelve in ‘94. They wouldn’t send an untrained operative into that situation, which means she was either born into the program or taken early.” He sighed. “Which, of course, means the program was still active on some levels, despite everything Katya did to stop it from being resurrected.”

Which meant they had both failed. Katerina Ivanovna Rostova had been one of the brightest, bravest women he had ever known. She had an internal strength and fire that rivaled his, but this fight had broken her down and destroyed her. Why was he doing this, still? Why did he not strike another deal, give them everything, take Lizzy and run away somewhere remote and calm, before this hell engulfed her too?

He thought of a small blonde girl with a gun in her hands, reciting mission objectives. That same girl, who should have been sitting at home and leafing through teen magazines, instead on the ground in some of the worst conditions known to man, amid heaps of human misery and suffering. A girl who only added to the violence and upheaval in the region. That girl had been someone’s child; had she been stolen? Sold? It happened, more often than most wanted to admit.

Was he any better a parent, though, truly? He had pressed a gun into his own daughter’s hands and taught her how to shoot, and shoot to kill. He had used bits of the program doctrine to train her so that if anything ever happened, she would survive it. He justified it to himself that way, but it wasn’t any better. She was gone, only blood left in her wake and a string of nightmares Red had never been able to escape.

_Only blood…_

He did the math in his head again, quickly. She was...she was the right age, this Hannah Ferris. Blonde, green-eyed, tall and lithe. Certainly a graceful enough carriage to once have belonged to a dancer.

A terrible knot began to form in his stomach, and he took another long sip of the tea to try and calm it. He’d been down this road so many times in the past. Always some glimmer of hope, some phantom of his baby Charlotte in a laugh, a voice, a face. His mind’s eye had projected her onto every blonde child he saw for years; at eight, her hair could have been cut, boys’ clothes masquerading her identity. It had haunted him, every waking moment and sometimes in dreams. The one person he was meant to protect with everything he was, and he had lost her. Failed her.

All of the resources at his disposal, and he had come up empty time and time again. She was gone. It had taken twenty-five years to acknowledge that, and even then, he had looked for her in that damn book Stanley Kornish kept. Looked for some kind of acknowledgement and closure. Diane Fowler had been the only person to even offer a shred of that, but as badly as he needed it, he would not let the cabal use it as leverage against him. He would never again give them that much of himself.

With all the danger they were in, he could not allow himself to start seeing ghosts. He needed clarity and truth, and that meant not pursuing patterns that did not exist. As much as he normally engaged in self-flagellation and guilt, this was not the time for it. He had to focus on Lizzy, on keeping her alive and safe. Right now, she was the only thing that kept him moving forward.

But still…

“Dembe, do me a favor,” he said. “When you hear from your contacts, see if there aren’t any photographs somewhere that could be dug up.”

Years ago, he had woken up to realize that with the passage of so many years, he might not recognize his own child as an adult. There were many factors that could change an adult human’s appearance, no matter how many times he ran her picture through Kaplan’s hijacked aging and facial recognition software.

But at twelve? With only four years’ difference, and even though children changed rapidly at that age, he would be able to recognize her. _Charlotte_.

That knot of hope formed again in his stomach, warring with terror at the thought that it might be true. He had no idea which was worse: his child dead, or his child taken, raised, programmed by monsters. His sweet, sensitive girl twisted into a deadly, hate-filled weapon.

Those last moments between Berlin and Zoe rose in his mind to taunt him. How the man, overcome with emotion, had extended his hand to his child, and she had pulled away from him, disgusted and angry. Hurt. If he found her, his Charlotte...if he found her alive, how could she not hate him? It was all his fault. Everything lost because of him.

He would take it, he knew. Her anger, hatred, anything. It was better than the nothing that had been his awful companion for so long. He would give anything to know that she still breathed, still walked the earth.

Hope. What a wretched thing.

He glanced at the clock. “Well, come on then, Dembe. We’ll be late for the show.”

 

*******************

 

_Port of Lisbon_

_Portugal_

 

The handy thing about owning an entire fleet of container ships was that there was no shortage of places one could hide nefarious actions from prying eyes. Liz tried to put aside the sick feeling in her stomach as she set foot on the boat, memories of holding Tom prisoner, of her harsh treatment of him and what had happened to Eugene Ames circling around her mind. Even worse, the things she had done to Owen Richards.

She could rationalize it away as the need for information, or whether they had deserved what they had gotten. But no, that wasn’t right. She couldn’t shift guilt or responsibility. It was her fault. All that violence had come from inside of her. Only by facing it and acknowledging its existence could she stop it from controlling her life. She wasn’t going to let herself get backed into a corner again, or locked into a cage of denial. Those roads only led to outbursts and breakdowns.

Vargas led her to a blue container in the middle of a stack and keyed the locked open. Red had told her what to expect, and though she schooled her expression into a smooth poker face, she was still surprised. _I have a number of them_ , he had said, _all furnished nicely; little apartments on the open ocean ready to take us away at any time._

Nicely, he had said. Her metric for “nicely” had been Pottery Barn, or anything that was slightly better than Ikea. But, of course, these were Red’s standards she was measuring by now. Your world, she chided herself internally, own it.

She stepped inside the tasteful micro-apartment, allowing herself a moment to admire the color choices, the warm woods and neutrals with little pops of color. It was very subdued and tasteful, very Reddington. It was like being surrounded by his presence, and that gave her a nice boost of confidence, reassurance.

The woman seated on the sofa with a glass of wine looked up at her entrance. Naomi Highland’s face was tight, anger written in the lines of her mouth and brow. She was well-attired in a dark green sheath dress with a long, thin gold necklace catching the light from the overhead lamp. Legs crossed comfortably, one arm draped across the back of the sofa. A position of self-assurance and power.

“Boy,” she said conversationally, though her voice was a little rough, “I sure can pick ‘em, can’t I?”

Liz stepped closer and took a seat on the chair next to the sofa, placing herself diagonally across from Naomi, in a comfortable line of sight from where the woman sat. A silent message: _I’ll play your game_.

“Reddington hired my ex-husband to enter my life as a protector, a ‘friend of a friend’, he said.” Liz folded her hands in front of her. “That same ex-husband then sold out Red to his enemy, a man that went by the codename ‘Berlin’. Berlin had Tom woo me, seduce me, and marry me all to get close to me and manipulate Reddington into revealing himself by placing me in danger. I had no idea. I thought I had met this wonderful, kind, funny, handsome school teacher. We were going to adopt a child. Even after Reddington showed up and tried to steer me towards the truth about Tom, I rebelled against him, pushing myself further into denial and digging my claws into that little fantasy life as deeply as I could get them.”

“So what happened to the husband?”

“I shot him and then blackmailed my former best friend into treating him and saving his life. Then I held him hostage on a boat for four months, trying to get information from him. At one point, things got out of hand, and he killed a man named Eugene Ames, a harbormaster, in order to prevent the cops from getting involved. Reddington tried to give me this fancy apartment, something to try and lift my spirits out of the gutter I had spiraled into. I sold it, and set up a scholarship fund for Ames’s daughter.”

Naomi studied her for a moment, then nodded in a sort of acceptance. She leaned forward and poured a second glass of wine, and offered it to Liz. “It was the goddamned yoga instructor, of all banal, suburban bullshit.” She sat back and shook her head as Liz sipped the wine. “He sold out my child for the goddamned yoga instructor. At least I know he isn’t a spy like yours,” she added with a snort into her glass. “When I found out, I put him in a headlock and he cried like a baby.”

“Jennifer’s alive,” Liz said.

Naomi lowered her wine slowly. “If you think you can hold my daughter hostage in exchange for information about your past, Elizabeth…”

“I don’t need information about me. I have enough of that.”

“Then what do you want?” She tilted her head. “You want to know about Reddington,” she guessed, her voice flat with disdain.

Liz took a deep breath. _Please, please forgive me, Ray. This is going to hurt._ “No. I want to know about Brenda and Charlotte Clarke.”

 

*****************

 

TBC

 

 


	15. Naomi Highland

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am doing my best to accurately represent the various places around the globe that action is taking place. If you spot a glaring error, however, please do let me know!
> 
> This is a very information-heavy chapter, so it's actually a little short. It's very meaty, though, so enjoy! Just watch out for falling chunks of exposition. 
> 
> Special thanks to figure_of_dismay and deandratb for the beta work! 
> 
> Get ready for some serious Profiler!Liz work here.

_Port of Lisbon_

_Portugal_

 

_“Raymond,” she said, and he looked over at her. Only a handful of times had she used his full first name, and those times usually indicated either a matter of great importance or of great intimacy. Since she was fully dressed, leaning against the hotel fireplace with stiff, tight body language, he assumed this was a case of the former._

_“Yes, Lizzy.”_

_She tapped painted nails on the mantelpiece. Vargas had taken one look at her rough hands and shorn hair and nearly shrieked. He had given her look a polish, and Red could tell she felt a little more comfortable with herself. Physical appearance could double as psychological armor; a fact he could well attest to from personal experience. “I want you to...I need you to promise me something, and it won’t be easy.”_

_His heart clenched with unease, but he tucked his hands into his pockets and waited for her to continue._

_When those blue eyes found his, they held him captive under their intensity. Her expression spoke of determination, but also of great concern. “I need you to promise me that whatever you hear, whatever is said or happens, short of my life being endangered, you will not interfere. I think I see a pattern here, but I can’t pursue it unless I’m in total control of the situation.”_

_Red frowned. Was that all? Had he not offered her enough assurances of his faith in her abilities? No, there was something else behind this. “I trust you,” he repeated, stepping forward and touching her arm, part of him tensely waiting for the other shoe to drop._

_“No,” she countered, shaking her head, “not like this. I know you trust me,” she added when he would have interrupted, placing her hand on his chest, just over his heart. “I know you do, to the best extent that you are able, but when you hear...this trust extends beyond anything that you might have thought yourself capable of bearing. I need you to stay strong, to resist interfering simply to make it stop. If you watch...I just...I want you to…” She cupped his face and kissed him gently. “I love you. Please remember that.”_

“I want to know about Brenda and Charlotte Clarke.”

All at once, it felt as though the air rushed out of his lungs as he watched the footage from the ship's bridge. It had been so long since he had heard their names on anyone else’s lips but his own. Their names, emerging into daylight, in a conversation without him there, gave his ghosts a sharp edge. It defined them, solidified them, and they lept to the forefront of his thoughts, bringing everything else behind them in a crashing wake of pain and anger.

Oh, hell. Lizzy. At once, he understood her reticence, her fears as she made him promise not to interfere. Anger tightened into a coiled spring in his stomach, but he swallowed it down and closed his eyes. He had promised.

If it had been a month ago, even a week, he would have stepped in without a second thought. But Liz, in the state she had been in then, would have been perfectly capable of cutting him open to pry loose what she thought she needed; to trample over everything that was actually important to get to one single detail. She had been hurting, lost. People in that state rarely cared about anyone else’s pain, or the bigger picture.

So much had changed in so little time, as it often did when the circumstances grew intense and dangerous. People shifted and changed rapidly under pressure. The woman in that room now wasn’t the angry, lost girl he’d known before, but the same fiery angel of retribution that had rescued him from certain death in Paris. Through peril, she had found herself. He had to trust her. He would not undermine her.

The fear was still there in the back of his head, the memory of the accusations Liz had thrown at him the last time he’d kept her and Naomi apart still fresh. _I love you. Please remember that._

He tried. God help him, he tried to remember it.

 

*******************************

 

Naomi Highland could have said any number of things in response to the question. _Who? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those names mean nothing to me. What does this have to do with my daughter?_ Yet they both knew that was a waste of time.

“Well,” she said at last, “he hasn’t come running in here, so I guess this wasn’t a gambit. He told you?”

Liz desperately wanted to glance in the direction she knew the camera to be hidden, but also didn’t care to undermine her position. “Some,” she admitted. “Enough.”

Naomi sipped her wine again. “Then what could you possibly want me to add? Brenda was pretty, in that pale, freckled Molly Ringwald kind of way that was popular in the Eighties. Charlotte was a cute kid, very sweet. Never met a stranger in her life, which gave Ray fits.”

“You know what happened to them.”

Naomi looked at her. “I don’t, not really. I can guess. There were enough threats issued to me and my own daughter that I could figure it out.”

“That’s why you agreed to continue the Reddington cover, they threatened Jennifer.”

“Ray pieced that much together. This should be old news for you, Agent Keen.”

“I’m not a special agent anymore, Mrs. Highland, and you know that.”

She sat forward. “Then why do you care? Let him drop you off on some little protected tropical island like he tried to do for me. Forget about all of this. Live your days drinking out of a coconut shell and sleeping in a hammock. It’s got to be better.” She ran a glance down Liz’s expensive ensemble. “Though I suppose you’re doing pretty well for yourself now. That much money has an allure of its own, doesn’t it?”

“Tell me about Brenda Clarke.”

“Really? Wouldn’t you much rather hear about your own mother? They spent a lot of time together in Russia, you know; your mother and Ray. Do you think about that, when the two of you do whatever it is you do?”

“Brenda. Clarke.” She repeated it slowly, with determination.

“If you want to get out the list of all the women he’s ever been with, it’s going to be a long evening. Jealousy is useless when it comes to that man.”

“I’m not the one with reason to be jealous,” Liz countered expertly. “I don’t need to know about her relationship with her husband, I need to know about her relationship with you.”

Naomi frowned. “I didn’t have a relationship with Brenda. We said hello and exchanged fruitcake at Christmas that neither one of us ever ate. I doubt it takes a profiler to put together the fact that I didn’t care for her much. I might have, if there was anything there to care for, but whatever personality Brenda had, she hid it at the bottom of a Valium bottle.”

“Then it was easy for you to manipulate her.”

“Manipulate how, exactly?”

“Maybe you were just trying to help, at first. Here, let me take the girls for a little while, they’ll get to know each other. They’re both only children, it’ll be good for them to make a new friend. She seemed so overwhelmed by everything, didn’t she? And little Charlotte, she seemed so much happier away from that house, out with people who were happy. Did you bring her presents, things to help her cope with her anxiety and depression? Wine? Pills? Sure, you’ll take the girls again, they had such fun last time.”

Naomi’s expression had hardened. “What are you getting at, Ms. Keen?”

“You’re a mother,” Liz continued, “you shouldn’t have underestimated her. Brenda Clarke may have had her issues, but she was a mother. She had given up her dream, her one passion, sacrificed all of it to bring that child into the world and raise her in a proper home. That child would have been her lifeline. Did you really think she wouldn’t notice the changes?”

“The changes.”

“The flippancy, the temper outbursts coupled with times of nearly impenetrable silence. The indoctrination. Her daughter had started to change. At first, maybe, she thought it was just early puberty. It can happen as young as eight sometimes, though usually in a dancer or gymnast it’s delayed. But then come the nightmares. That’s the hardest thing to deal with when indoctrinating children - the nightmares. It’s such a tell-tale sign. You know, I remember it; the screaming. I was so little. I don’t remember that house, not really, just these flashes of stairs that seemed to go on forever, wood everywhere, a room with rounded walls just like a princess’s tower. A pink tutu, all these toys...and screams. I remember the screaming in the middle of the night. It scared me and I cried. I think he thought it was me, at first, but I remember the terrified voice, the confusion as he tried to comfort his child who was inexplicably screaming.”

Naomi said nothing in response, simply sat as still as a gazelle in the sights of a lion.

“Brenda figured it out, didn’t she? Connected you to the nightmares, the strange behavior of your own daughter. She was a handful, wasn’t she, your Jennifer? Always in trouble at school, always acting out. Maybe you thought the program would help her. You were at your wits end, I’m sure; a single parent, trying to have a career at the same time. It must have been terribly difficult. But here’s this program you find out about from a friend, a superior. You’re the perfect trial case. And it works! It works really well, aside from the nightmares, but then she outgrows those. It’s the Cold War, there are enemies everywhere, and you start to not only believe in the efficacy of the program, but also its ideology. You saw Charlotte dance once, didn’t you? Such a limber, quick-witted child. She’d be perfect. And if you could get him on board, you wouldn’t lose him to Katerina Rostova, with whom you thought he was infatuated. You were scared he would defect, leave you. But he loved his daughter more than anything and if you could tie her to the United States to the point where she wouldn’t leave, then neither would he.”

She swallowed, slightly, and it took her a fraction too long to answer. “This is some very impressive conjecture.”

“You were his CIA contact. You are the best link directly to him, his family, and all of his records that disappeared. But more than that? I remember.” Liz sat forward, elbows resting on her knees. “I remember the excitement of waking up on Christmas morning, the expectation that someone special would be there. But she wasn’t, was she? You thought she was. You’re not a monster, you didn’t want to hurt Charlotte. You thought he had sent her along to wherever it was that he had hidden me; that’s what Brenda told you. I was so upset at all the upheaval, and I had taken a shine to Charlotte, so it made sense for her to go with me until I settled down. That’s what Brenda said. Ray and Charlotte would be back by New Year’s, of course, so maybe Brenda would have a party then.”

Naomi flinched and looked away.

“Brenda was suspicious of you, and she wasn’t as dull as you thought she was. She was clever. Emotionally fragile, but clever. She would have to have been; Charlotte’s high IQ didn’t come from Ray alone, did it? That’s why she was so fragile: she was bored. She had no challenges, but you? You were a challenge. Things were getting better between them, did you know? She was turning herself around, but also? She was snooping. She got into his files, and figured out what you were up to with the girls. How did you find out? Did you catch her? Or were you merely suspicious?”

Liz set her wine glass aside. “Is that why you hired Owen Richards to go to their house on Christmas Eve? You thought it would just be Brenda. You didn’t know Ray was on his way home, you thought he was off wherever he had taken me, and Charlotte. You were so relieved that you didn’t stop to question it, though a moment’s reconsideration would have told you that he would never place his daughter in harm’s reach–and my parents? They were nothing _but_ harm.”

“I don’t know who–”

“Who Owen Richards was? Yes, you do. He was your MI6 asset. MI6 tried to get rid of him, out of sheer embarrassment, but he had struck a deal with the CIA. You inherited him as an asset from your former training agent: Alan Fitch.”

“How–”

“Richards told me.” Liz ran a finger along the edge of the wine glass. “After I cut into him like he’d cut into so many women, he told me. He was quite talkative. As a matter of fact, he talked about that night, back in 1990. He went to Alan Fitch after you spoke with him. You had let drop that the program was still active, and Richards thought he could use that as a bargaining chip. Fitch knew what Richards was, and while he knew he couldn’t allow Raymond Clarke to find out what was going on and blow the whistle, he also didn’t want to unleash the demon that Richards was on Ray’s family. So he sent in his own guys instead and cut Richards loose.”

Liz sat back and folded her arms. “The thing I find most curious is that from 1994 onward, you lived your life entirely as a woman in exile. You really became Naomi Highland, and never set even a single toe over the line. Did Fitch threaten you that severely? I would imagine he did. You could have broken the whole thing wide open.

“After all, Charlotte didn’t quite take to the program. She was problematic; too sensitive, too old. She needed to be broken more thoroughly in order to be brought up as she was meant to be. But Jennifer...Jennifer excelled. And she excelled to a frightening degree, didn’t she? She progressed deeper and deeper into the program until you realized just what you had allowed to continue by supporting the program. It was never about nationalism and citizenship and discipline. It was about advantage. Deepest cover sleeper agents, drones in a much larger political machine than you ever envisioned.”

She shook her head. “Others have tried similar methods to mixed success: Anslo Garrick and his little band of rebels, Bill McCreary and his training school of misfit sociopathic orphans–even the government with Sub-Project 7. They disseminated the information, didn’t they? The cabal leaked portions of the training program in order to experiment and refine it.”

Naomi hadn’t moved a muscle, and Liz could practically smell the fear coming off of her. She would know Red was watching, somehow. And now he knew she had betrayed him in the worst way possible. Liz wasn’t sure if Naomi knew the full extent of the ruthlessness Red could employ; had Raymond Clarke been able to go to the extremes that Raymond Reddington had been forced to over the years?

Naomi blinked rapidly and looked away, drawing in a shuddering breath. “I didn’t…” she began, and then shook her head. “I backed out, at the last minute. I wouldn’t give Fitch their address or any of the personal information I had. He threatened me, us, but I just couldn’t. I called Brenda that night, even, but she never picked up. Ray had a car phone, but I couldn’t reach him, either. I tried to wipe and burn as much as I could, but Fitch must have gotten the information out of something I missed.”

“Did Fitch talk to Jennifer?”

She looked at Liz, eyes wide. “Jennifer wouldn’t have...she wouldn’t know…”

“How did Jennifer feel about Charlotte? She didn’t like her, did she?” Liz guessed. A horrible, terrible suspicion had started to grow in her chest the minute she’d reviewed that security footage from Dembe before this interrogation. She had focused on Jennifer, on her facial expressions, her body language, every part of a human that Liz had been taught to read. There was a deep anger there, a hatred that had to be personal and long-standing. Everything Liz had started to put together from Hannah Ferris’s file suddenly coalesced into one painful, awful theory. “Charlotte wanted a sister, but Jennifer didn’t. She’d always been anti-social at school, hadn’t she? Narcissistic. Difficult to manage. Charlotte was the opposite, the girl everyone got along with and liked. Teacher’s pet, but also that kid that puts everyone at ease, the one who steps in and stops bullying when she sees it. The good girl who’s just genuinely good. That must have rankled Jennifer, even more so when she saw you fawn over Charlotte. You were just trying to be helpful, to give Charlotte a maternal figure where you saw her own failing. You thought Jennifer was strong enough to be able to share her mother.”

Naomi shook her head slowly, her expression crumbling.

“Did Alan Fitch ever speak to Jennifer?” When Naomi nodded, Liz pressed forward. “He told you he wanted to talk about the program with her, I’m sure. Is there any way Jennifer would have had the address?”

“A letter,” she replied in a strained voice. “I saw Charlotte give it to her. I thought it was sweet. I was going to tell Jennifer later that she couldn’t write to her at that address, that we’d have to use a PO box or something else anonymous, but I never did. Jennifer kept it with her, and I thought...I thought…”

“You thought she felt the same way Charlotte did. It was an easy thing to believe. You just wanted a family. You wanted to be a good mother.”

“Jennifer disappeared when she was around seventeen. I only ever saw her in spurts after that. She’d say she was well, but I was pretty sure she’d gotten mixed in with some bad crowd or another. Frank was convinced she was a drug dealer. I took her out of the program when she was twelve. I told Fitch we couldn’t do it any longer, not if we were to be convincing as the abandoned Reddington family. We’d have every inch of our lives observed and combed over, and there couldn’t be any connections. He agreed. But I think it damaged her. I should have gotten her to a therapist or a psychiatrist, but I was terrified that if I did, she’d reveal the program and then they’d kill her. Write her off as collateral damage.”

Liz reached for the tablet she’d brought in with her and keyed up the security footage. “I don’t think Jennifer ever left the program. She still works for them.” She passed the tablet to Naomi, who accepted it reluctantly.

“You’re right in that all of this is conjecture,” Liz told her. “This is the first, and only, real proof I have of any of this, and even then it’s mostly useless to prove any kind of case. That’s Jennifer, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “When was this taken?”

“A few days ago in a compound on a little Caribbean island that belonged to the King family; a family of notorious thieves who auction off illicit, rare items on the black market.”

Naomi was staring intently at the screen, and Liz practically held her breath. When Jennifer punched the woman on screen with a vicious jab to the gut, Naomi winced. “Oh, god.”

“You recognize her, don’t you? The other woman? Or at least, you recognize Jennifer’s reaction to her, because it was always that way, even when you didn’t want to see it. Jennifer _always_ hated Charlotte.”

The expression on her face was confirmation enough of Liz’s suspicions. She felt sick, and even sicker at the thought of what horrors must be raging through Red’s mind. She stood. “I’ll leave that here so you can watch it again. Right now, that footage is my only proof, but you’re going to help me find more. You’re going to help me unmask this program and the cabal, because this is the only way I let your daughter live, do you understand? This is the only way Jennifer lives.” She pointed to the screen. “You owe that little girl whose life you ruined, and God help you, you owe the father whose heart you shattered.”

“I didn’t know...I didn’t know she was alive.”

Liz turned around at the door. “Does that make it any better?”

“No,” she admitted. “Do you...you won’t hurt Jennifer?”

“I didn’t say that,” Liz countered. “But I’ll let her live.”

 

*************************************

 

_30 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska_

_The United States_

 

She stood at the crest of the hill, snowshoes firmly clamped upon on the bottom of her boots. All around her the stain of orange-red sunlight spread across the snow and the sun began to crest the horizon. The snap of steel trap echoed through the morning and she wondered what unfortunate creature was snared inside of it.

She pulled her hood back and let the crisp cold stroke her face. It felt as cleansing in its own way as the harsh sun of the desert. She had always been more comfortable in the cold places of the world. The bareness of the world made her feel alone and unmasked, the stark nature of life and death crystallized in a single steaming breath in the cold wind.

This was one of the few places in the world that she could remember herself, truly. Not just echoes of memories, but real feelings that made their way out into the stillness, filling up the silence in her mind. She had lived, survived, by repressing herself behind so many façades, the most persistent of which was Hannah Ferris.

She sighed. Ever present was the fear that she would never know how to stop being Hannah Ferris and start being herself again. It was easy to think that she had really died on that night twenty-five years ago, but if that were true, if she were really a different person, it wouldn’t hurt so damn much.

Out here, alone in the wilderness, Hannah Ferris simply vanished; all her good intentions, her terrible and harsh methods, her responsibilities, her work, her ruthlessness, her desire - it all crystallized in the frozen air and it shattered. The wind blew away the remnants, like the ashes of a departed friend. She knew she would find her echo again; she had to. But for now, she was simply herself.

“My name is Charlotte,” she told the horizon. “I am Charlotte Clarke.”

She only registered her tears when her cheeks began to sting in the cold. Laughing slightly at herself, she pulled off a glove to wipe her eyes.

“It has that effect on people, this mountain,” the voice said, startling her. It was rare that someone could sneak up on her, especially in snow this deep. She turned around and found herself face to face with the quarry she hunted.

“Professor Madsen,” she said.

“I was,” he answered, stepping forward. Like her, he wore snowshoes. He hadn’t seemed to have aged a day, save for some lines around his eyes and the silver in his hair. He bore the cold better than her; his clothes were simple layers that had seen many winters, and there were fewer of them. Clear blue eyes peered out at her from under the mop of black and silver hair. He wore no hat against the cold, but had the collar of his coat turned up.

She held her hands at her side, trying to be as non-threatening as possible. “I’m Charlotte. Char–”

“Charlotte Clarke. Yes, I heard you, just now.” He tilted his head at her. “I would have remembered you, anyway. Are you here to kill me, Charlotte?”

“No.”

“You should be.”

She shrugged on shoulder. “Maybe. I don’t know. Your training came in pretty handy at one point.”

“I heard about that. I didn’t hear that you’d survived. I left, after that, or at least tried to,” he added, looking away again. “I didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. It was hard to get away, but I managed it, finally. And yet, here you are.”

Charlotte swallowed past a lump in her throat. “You can’t outrun sin, Lukas. I tried for so long, but it just keeps stacking up against you. Sooner or later you have to face atonement.”

“Are you my atonement, Charlotte Clarke? After everything I did to you?”

“I don’t know, Lukas, but I hope to God you’ll be part of mine. Can we talk?” She gestured down the hill. “It took me a long time to find you.”

When he looked back, there were tears in his eyes. “I wish you’d been faster.”

He closed his eyes, and she cried out, “NO!” Her feet propelled her forward, but the red spray was already erupting from between his eyes. He crumpled, and she fell to her knees. “No, oh God, no, please no,” she begged, but the deep crimson halo was already spreading out into the snow from the back of his head; a morbid imitation of the sunrise.

“Why?” she demanded furiously, turning her head to the approaching footsteps. She found herself staring up at the pinched face of Jacob Phelps, rifle now slung over his shoulder and a handgun pointed at her head. She shook her head, a stunned sort of resignation settling over her. “Of course. It would be you, wouldn’t it?”

He tossed her a case and she opened it to find a syringe inside. “Inject yourself. It’s a sedative.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“I’m not alone out here, and I’m not the only weapon trained on you right now. Charlotte,” he said, getting her attention with her name, “if you don’t inject yourself, they will kill you. Do this, and I might be able to give you a chance.” He swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

He meant it, she could hear it in his voice. Yet there was a river of bad blood between them, and fording that was a difficult task. She stared up at him, her knees frozen in the blood-soaked snow, his face haloed by the rising sun and the powder blue sky. Her best chance lay dead at her feet, and she could either take a gamble on Jacob or go out now in a hail of bullets. God, it would be so easy to just make all of this stop.

She looked down at the case, and her breath stopped in her throat as her father’s voice filled her ears, soft and soothing. The memory was such a simple little thing: that time she’d had to go to the hospital and get a tetanus shot after cutting her leg on a rusted nail out by the old shed. The needle had looked so big, and she’d been so scared of it. Such a little thing to be scared of, but fear was never reasonable.

She could practically feel her father’s hand in hers, squeezing her fingers gently and reminding her to be brave. She cried because it hurt, but then he told her that now she knew what it felt like and there was no reason to be afraid any longer. Pain fades. Tears fade. Courage stays.

She could end this now, but it would also be the end of hope. That one tenuous strand of hope had kept Charlotte Clarke alive inside her heart all these years. In the deepest, truest part of herself, she was still that little girl sitting on the landing, watching the front door, waiting for her father to come through the door and wish her a Merry Christmas. Just one more laugh, one more smile, one more duet with his fingers playing the bass clef and hers playing the treble.

She picked up the syringe.

 

************************

 

_Port of Lisbon_

_Portugal_

 

Somehow, Liz knew what she’d find before she even stepped onto the bridge: nothing. She had prepared herself for an argument, or for the icy treatment, but really, she had known. There was an internal compass inside her that always pointed to Red; he was her guide, her true north. As she climbed the metal stairs to the bridge, she felt as though that compass was spinning, unable to locate him.

The bridge was empty. Reddington was gone. Part of her felt cheated, let down; here she was, emotionally wrung out by that interrogation, feeling fragile and in need of comfort, and he wasn’t here. But it was a small, narcissistic part, and the rest of her chided it into silence. If she felt emotionally wrung out, it was a drop in the ocean compared to Red’s feelings. This wasn’t about her, it was about him.

Liz closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, his absence growing like a hole in her center. She wanted to touch him, hold him tight against this terrible sea of misery. It was only then that she realized just how much he meant to her, and just how deeply she loved him. It was a terrifying feeling.

She sat down in the cushioned chair at the helm and waited in silence. When she heard footsteps on the decking, she looked up and saw Dembe enter. “Elizabeth,” he said.

“Do you know where he went?” she asked.

He shook his head. “But I know why he left.”

“Yeah,” she replied, swallowing past a lump of fear in her throat. She felt cut off from her anchor, adrift now on the currents that pulled her in several different directions. It was disorienting.

But if she’d entered the bridge and found him inside, she would have been surprised. Of course he would go. He would find Charlotte. There was nothing on earth that could keep him from doing so once he found out the truth. Liz just hoped and prayed that it wouldn’t kill him in the process.

“You did the right thing,” Dembe said. “So much hope can break a man, and I watched for years as it wore Raymond down. If you had voiced your suspicions to him beforehand, I cannot say he would have listened. And if he had, who knows what he would have done. You forced him to deal with you as an equal, as it should be. He heard you. He understood. And he has left you with the decision of what to do with Naomi Highland.”

She leaned back into the chair. “We need her alive. She’s our best chance to draw out Jennifer and learn more about the current state of the program and the cabal’s plans for it.”

“I agree.”

“So what do we do from here?”

Dembe spread his hands. “All of our resources are at your disposal, Elizabeth. I know you are not a criminal. I will handle the business. You will handle the truth. That was Raymond’s request.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper.

She took it from him and unfolded it to read simple words: _Thank you. I love you._ She recognized Ray’s handwriting. Something inside of her relaxed, knowing that he was not angry with her, with the way she’d handled this. He still trusted and loved her, and he wouldn’t just abandon this thing that had sprung up between them. Suddenly, she felt just a little less adrift.

“Red said that Mr. Kaplan had been sent to gather the remnants of the task force,” she told Dembe. “Where will she take them?”

“She’s to take Aram Mojtabai to meet with our people in Morocco. You have met them: Borochov and his team.”

She did recall them; the group of hackers he’d employed to track down the mole in the task force two years ago. “The WikiLeaks guys?”

“Former WikiLeaks guys. They have since stopped hanging on Julian’s coat tails and permanently entered our employ.” Dembe folded his hands behind him, as though waiting for orders.

“Well then,” she said, standing up. “Let’s take our guest to Morocco.”

 

**************************

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise, this totally does have an ending, and I am steering us towards it. It's just a giant battle cruiser of a plot.


	16. Kevin Smits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Admiral Richard Abraham is a Blacklist character we meet in the s1 episode "The Judge". 
> 
> *Special thanks to my beta-readers, figure_of_dismay and deandratb
> 
> *TRIGGER WARNING: Maybe? For anxiety (also whump). There's a pretty detailed anxiety attack detailed. Also, there is some implied whump. You see the effects of it, but not the actual beatings.

_U.S.S. Lake Superior_

_Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean_

 

Kevin Smits was not new to the Navy or to special operations, yet this was possibly the oddest mission on which he’d ever been second mate. They had no definable course, no mission objective upon which he’d been briefed; yet he was to pass on down the line that there was a mission objective, and that in the meantime they’d be running training procedures. The whole thing was coded black ops, though while he had that level of clearance, the files were empty.

More confusing still was the prisoner. Every day for the past week he watched as they took her out, heavy chains binding her wrists and ankles, rough, stained blue jumpsuit looking even more rough and stained by the time they brought her back. They wouldn’t let him have anyone bring her fresh clothes, like they were afraid she’d seduce him or something.

Seriously, he was fairly certain half the ship knew he was gay, and married. The basic concepts of human decency were still at stake, however. He wasn’t an idiot. That was blood that stained the jumpsuit, and those were sounds of torture that came up from deep storage.

The men who accompanied her bothered him as well. He had been told they were CIA, but he’d worked with CIA. These guys weren’t CIA. They didn’t follow procedures.

He watched, from a spot in the shadows, as they took her out of the cell once more. Dragging, this time. She was slumped over. He winced when she put out a hand to steady herself and the fingers were bruised. When she looked up, her face matched her hand in color and swelling.

This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right.

So he sent a message.

 

*******************

 

_Seattle, Washington_

_The United States_

 

“Jesus, you’re a hard man to find.”

“Yes,” Reddington confirmed, turning around to face his old friend. “Richard, how are you? I can’t say I expected to hear from you again.”

Admiral Richard Abraham shrugged a little deeper into his overcoat. “I can’t say I expected to contact you.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how you manage it. I’m not even sure which message got to you.”

“None of them,” he confided. “The important part is that it let me know you were looking. Is this about your missing warship?”

Richard looked at him sharply. “How did you know about that?”

Red pulled out a knit cap from his raincoat pocket and tugged it over his head as a defense against the cold, misty rain. They began a slow, sedate pace along the Central Waterfront. “The _U.S.S. Lake Superior_ –which, by the way, is a terrible name–is a fully upgraded Ticonderoga-class warship. Upgraded vertical firing system, upgraded radar package, everything $250 million of your tax dollars the Navy can purchase and slap on the old girl’s rusted shell to make her shine again. You want to know where she is.”

“And you know?” He stuck his hands into his pockets.

“No,” Red answered. “But I want to know as much as you do. I’ve been tracking some people connected with it, and I would dearly love to find them.”

Richard nodded and looked out at the water. “Tell me something, Ray, and tell me the truth.” Red tilted his head and waited for him to continue. Richard lowered his voice. “Is this connected to everything that’s been in the news? I’m not talking about the girl, your Elizabeth Keen. I know better than to question you over a woman. I still remember the black eye you gave me when I stole Nori Parker’s underwear during that stupid frat raid. I mean everything else: all this stuff about the shadow governments and all. Is this related?”

Red studied his old friend before he answered, and found what he expected to see: genuine concern. Richard Abraham was, and always had been, a good man. A little high-spirited as a youth, a little too boisterous in his cups, a little too quick to trust, but a good man. Though that part about trust probably hadn’t been true for about twenty-ish years. “Yes.”

“Is that what all of this has been about?”

Red shook his head. “I can answer ‘yes’, but don’t revise me in your head as a hero. I’ve done a lot of bad things over the years. I’ve been what you would consider a traitor ten times over.”

Richard looked at him, again with that keenly piercing look. “Just not the first time.”

“Not the first time,” he confirmed.

“What’s on that ship you want so badly?”

“I could ask the same of you.”

He steered them closer to the water, rainboots slapping against the pavement. “They’re testing a new guided missile program, and on board are all the specifications. If the ship is compromised, I want them wiped.”

“Consider it done. How do we find it?”

“You haven’t answered me.”

“You said ‘one thing’, Dick. I answered one thing.” Red looked out over the water, squinting against the ever-present mist. Three youths in flannel shirts and hiking boots strolled past. One of them had a beard and moustache straight out of a silent film. They all carried some sort of hot beverage in a to-go cup. He shook his head slightly, mostly to himself. Kids. At least the haircuts were generally better with this generation than with his.

Richard took his hands out of his pockets and handed Red a slip of paper, on which were written a few sets of coordinates. “Two days ago I received a set of coded messages. They were sent directly to me, from a former officer I used to work with. Kid I recruited back in the late Nineties. He did some intelligence work for me, for a while, until he requested a transfer out of the program. His name is Kevin Smits, and I’ve never known an officer with a stronger moral compass.” He let out a breath in a thin cloud of steam. “He’s second mate on the Lake Superior. Contacted me because something caught his attention, and he didn’t think it was right. A prisoner.”

Red felt his heart leap wildly against his ribcage, but he kept it out of his face. Nearly a week and a half spent hunting down his daughter, and the trail had gone cold with the disappearance of Jacob Phelps. He knew Phelps was connected to Jennifer, and that Jennifer was connected to the ship, but until now he’d had no confirmation of anything else. “Did he say anything about this prisoner?” he asked calmly.

“A woman. Youngish, tall, blonde, green-eyed. They have her chained to hell and back, like she’s some kind of dangerous animal. I don’t know what kind of intel they think this girl’s got, but their treatment has been real rough.”

Red looked away, cursing himself inwardly for showing that much reaction, but God, it stung. He knew, objectively, that Charlotte had suffered far worse, but this was different. Everything until now hadn’t been in his power to prevent. But now? Now he knew the truth, and he was racing against a terrible, unforgiving clock to try and find her. Every punch, every kick, every sharp pain she had to endure until he got to her, he felt them. Each one was a knife blow to his heart. He placed a hand in his pocket and found the keychain, his hands closing around the cold metal in search of some small shred of connection and comfort.

He’d found the safehouse, the one Agent Navabi had tracked her to. He’d torn the place apart, and found nothing useful except this. The one item that confirmed everything that Liz had guessed, everything he had started to hope for and fear. It was her.

The silly little keychain. She had been, what, six? Seven? So excited to have a day at the mall with her parents all to herself. The entire mall and everything in it, and all she wanted was the keychain with a pair of shiny metal ballet slippers. She took it everywhere, like some kind of far less macabre rabbit’s foot.

The hiding spot was easy to find for someone who had created a lot of them for himself over the years. Always in the floor. Had she picked that up from him? Those boxes he used to show her?

A set of passports, cash, weapons. The keychain. _Oh, God_ , he had thought. It was just like the box he had left in the old house, the last one he had shown her. The one he had told her to find in an emergency. Everything important inside, including the damn keychain.

“You know her,” Richard guessed. “Who is she?”

Red stood in silence for a long moment, looking out over the calm waters of Pugent Sound. He didn’t want to answer, didn’t want to make it real. There was no point in denying it now; the people that held her knew who she was to him. Who he was to her. Did she know? If she did, why did she never contact him? She could have, a dozen times over.

The fear and guilt tore at him until he was ill with it. He hadn’t slept more than two or three hours at a time in days. All he knew was that he had to keep going. He had to find her, whatever the cost.

He turned around, and knew just how much misery was written in his face by the surprise in Richard’s. “My daughter,” he said simply, his voice low and rough. “She’s my child.”

Confusion and horror warred for dominance in his reaction. “Jesus. _Ray._ ”

“The night I disappeared, so did my family. My wife, my little girl. The two you met, the woman and child on the news, they were CIA cover. I came home to a house full of blood and I thought my family was dead. But I never knew. Never for certain.I looked for twenty-five years, and only now…”

Richard swore under his breath. “You realize this is a trap? If you’re just now finding this out. This is a trap for you.”

“Yeah,” he confirmed, “that thought has occurred to me.”

Richard chewed on his lip for a long moment. “I need this off the books, which is why I need you. Do this, Ray, and I’ll help you out. Things are getting shaken up a bit at the Pentagon with all this chaos, and oddly enough? My past association with you now gives me some clout. It’s known in a lot of circles that you’re behind the release of all this damaging information. People are already talking about you really being deep cover.”

He laughed at that, hollowly. “The deepest.”

“It’s a plausible enough premise. I can try to make it stick.”

“I don’t care about my name, Dick. It was never mine to begin with.”

“No,” he conceded, “I don’t suppose it was, and I don’t suppose you do. But you do care about Agent Keen, or Masha Rostova, whichever she prefers. And this girl on the ship you think is your daughter? You care about her. As a criminal, you will always have a target on your back, and so will your loved ones.”

“I did when I was a boy scout, too, Dick. There’s no magic eraser that can rid me of danger.” He flipped up the hood of his jacket. The mist was getting down into the collar of his shirt. “You don’t have to sell me on this; I’m in. I’m going after that ship one way or another.”

Richard shook his head in frustration. “Yeah, I know. What I’m trying to tell you is that you don’t have to do it alone, Ray. Go after the ship. I’ll watch your back and try to scramble something in if things go south. I can’t make any guarantees, but you have my word that I’ll try.”

Red nodded. “I’ll take it.”

 

*********************

 

_U.S.S. Lake Superior_

_Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean_

 

“It’s not broken,” Jacob said gently, feeling the corners of her jaw with his fingers. “You’ll still be able to chew solid food.”

His attempt at levity sounded hollow to his own ears, and he suppressed a sigh. She just watched him, silently, with those green eyes that could always crack him right open. Granted, one was swelled shut, but that didn’t stop her from practically nailing him to the bulkhead with the other. Shit. He hated seeing her like this.

God, he had loved her once, in that totally obsessive, selfish way that teenagers love. He’d been crazy for her; she was hot, completely cooler than anyone he had ever met, and she could kick his ass. Somewhere along the way, he’d finally realized that she’d been using him, that she was part of his training. A crash course in emotional manipulation and heartbreak.

Jacob leaned against the bulkhead and slid to the ground. She didn’t move, but then there wasn’t much movement she could make. A little bit of shuffling here and there, but even if she subdued him and got free, what then? There was nowhere to go, and even she couldn’t take out a ship full of enemies in her condition. “How did we get here?” he wondered aloud.

“On a helicopter,” she provided, helpfully, swinging her legs slowly onto her bunk.

“I’m not playing good cop to their bad cop, you know. You can actually answer me.”

“I know I can,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I will.”

He shook his head slowly and closed his eyes. “I say this with full realization that you will dismiss it, but I didn’t want any of this to happen. I tried to get out from under them, but the minute I made that connection to Jennifer Reddington, they had me.”

“Marks,” she corrected. “It was Jennifer Marks. She doesn’t get to have any part of his name, even his codename.”

“Jesus,” he said softly, “you’re his _daughter_. Of all people. I had no idea.”

“No one did. I kept it that way.”

“Out of fear?”

“Yes, but not of him.” She lowered herself down so that she was lying on her back. The ponytail her hair was gathered into draped off the back of the platform and grazed his knee. He felt an absurd impulse to tug it.

How had everything brought them to this point? “I’m not going to do this,” he said quietly, and she was so silent that for a long moment, he wasn’t sure that she heard. “What they want me to do. I won’t do it.”

“You do what you have to in order to survive,” she whispered back. It had been their mantra, growing up under Bud’s iron fist. Survival first. Friendships after.

“This is my fault.”

“Yes,” she acknowledged, “but it’s also mine. Though I will say you should have run off to that island when you had the chance and gotten out for good.”

“I stayed for Liz.”

“You stayed for yourself. You might think you stayed for her, but it was for you, so that you could have what you wanted. The business, the money, the excitement, but also the girl. A rinse and repeat failure of the same manipulative, lying position you were in before. Though,” she added wryly, “I’m sure you would have gotten around to telling her about the business eventually.”

He winced and looked up at the ceiling. She wasn’t wrong.

She shifted on the platform, easing herself into a slightly more comfortable position. “Have you ever been to the cathedral at Chartres?”

“No.”

“In the middle of the nave, there’s this beautiful inlaid labyrinth. Not a maze, mind you, a labyrinth. Mazes have dead ends, wrong turns. A labyrinth is simply one, long, twisted path that takes you to a destination. It can get confusing, you can lose your sense of direction entirely, but the labyrinth itself will never mislead you, only your own mind. In the medieval church, labyrinths represented the idea of pilgrimages: the longer the path, the more time for reflection and prayer. To make it more difficult, to really show their devotion, some people used to traverse the labyrinths on their knees. It showed penitence, but also understanding that the road is long, and difficult. There’s no shortcut to enlightenment, no easy cheat to gain redemption.” She sighed. “You can’t just jump the fence to being a better person, Jacob. You can’t just show up and do one good thing and be absolved. You’ve got to get down on your knees and work.”

“And you know how to do that?” he asked.

“No,” she answered, and coughed. He winced at the wetness of it. Infection was likely setting in, despite his efforts to tend her injuries. They didn’t care what happened to her, so they hadn’t provided him much in the way of medical supplies. They’d milk her for information and then use her as bait to get Reddington. If an infection weakened her, then she was less dangerous, and that was all the better for them. “God, no. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m not a good person. That’s okay. A good person couldn’t do what I’ve had to do. Sometimes, the world needs monsters.”

“So you’re what, a gargoyle?”

“It’s not a bad job, actually,” she said. “Sleep all day, fight demons at night.” She coughed again. “Health plan’s shit, though.”

He shook his head, laughing despite himself. “Nikki.”

“Charlotte,” she corrected. “Now that the cat’s out of the bag, as it were, it’s Charlotte.”

“I had just gotten used to thinking of you as Hannah.”

“I had just gotten used to thinking of you as still an asshole.” She cleared her throat. “Though I suppose I bear some of the blame for that.”

He shook his head. “Maybe. I was kind of an asshole before that, though. I probably would have been an asshole without you breaking my heart.”

“ _Your_ heart? I was the one who spent two months in a Mexican jail because of you and Gina. Tell me something, Jacob, and tell me honestly. How were things, really, between you and Elizabeth? Setting aside the deception. If you had continued as Tom Keen. How were things?”

It took him a long time to answer. He didn’t want to. “Bad. Things were...bad. I was already losing her to Reddington, to her job. Liz had this idea of a perfect life where we both had careers and kids–we almost adopted a baby. A large part of me felt trapped by it, by the mission, but there was a part of me that fell in love with that idea of a life. A real, actual life; the kind you’re supposed to want. The minute my mission was over, my cover blown, I realized how badly I wanted it. I blamed Reddington for ruining it, for turning our lives upside down and manipulating Liz through the FBI, but that’s not entirely the truth. She chose her job, her work, over us numerous times. If there had been no cover, no deception to maintain, I can’t say with any sense of honesty that we would have lasted.”

“She turned you into the FBI.”

“Yeah. I played it off–and masterfully, I might add. Just like Prague. Remember Prague?”

She snorted and laughed, and the laugh turned into another cough. “Yeah. Oh, God, Prague. That was a blast. That fucking church.”

“The one with all the bones?”

“The bone church! I can’t believe we had sex in a church built on the remains of plague victims.”

He smiled at the memory. “We were insane. Anyway, yeah. She turned me in as a suspect, and I had to pretend that it was no big deal that she suspected me of being a murderer.”

“Which was true. You are.”

“Yes, but Tom Keen wasn’t.” He rubbed his face. “That was the point. And I see yours. What I had with Liz never really existed. We were both in love with the illusions of each other that we created.”

“I’m so glad we had this little chat. I’ll send my bill in the mail.”

He watched her, the strong profile of her face as she stared up at the ceiling. “Always the clever girl,” he admitted. “Keep me talking about myself so I forget to question you.”

“Well, you’re a narcissist, so you are one of your favorite subjects. It’s not all that difficult.”

“What are you doing, Charlotte? What threat do you pose that has Jennifer so terrified?”

She turned her head to face him. “We’ve established it. I’m the gargoyle, Jacob. It’s my job to scare the demons.”

 

*******************

 

_San Francisco, California_

_The United States_

 

The old brickwork factory was dimly lit from outside, and just barely from the interior by their flickering flashlights. Ressler stepped cautiously, noting the absence of syringes and other paraphernalia he would have expected from an abandoned building in the middle of a city. There were no graffiti tags on the interior, no worn mattresses or box huts.

As he and Alex Taylor entered the main workroom, however, they found long lines of benches, some with scales and other measuring devices perched on the ends. “Ex-triad warehouse,” Taylor claimed, picking up a metal plate that looked like it had belonged to a set of measuring scales. “Heroin, probably.”

“Charming,” Ressler replied. He lowered his sidearm. Oddly enough, he hadn’t felt compelled to return either it or his badge to the FBI. “You sure this is the place?”

Taylor grunted. “I’m starting to doubt that. Lo Baozha has never dealt well with any of the active triads. They get most of their labor from trafficking, and she was trafficked herself as a little girl. I don’t think she’s ever forgiven them.”

“You would be correct,” said a raspy voice, and a small Chinese woman stepped from the shadows. She wore a powder blue suit and a string of pearls, her graying black hair styled elegantly on her head. “On most counts at least. This was a triad warehouse. Now it’s mine. Hello, Mr. Taylor, how are you?”

Taylor holstered his pistol and stepped forward with an outstretched hand. “Madame Lo, it’s a pleasure to see you again. I’m well, and you? How’s business?”

“Booming, as expected in times of uncertainty. Everyone wants comfort. Opium and sex never go out of style.”

Ressler couldn’t quite control his flinch, and she noticed it. “New recruit?” she asked Taylor with lifted eyebrows.

“We’re still breaking him in,” Taylor replied. “You said you had a message for us?”

“I have employees who offer that service.”

“For some definition of ‘offer’.” The minute the sass was out of his mouth, Ressler regretted it. Letting go of the lawman inside of him had been a far more difficult struggle than he had thought.

Lo Baozha merely raised her eyebrows again. “I knew you took in ex-soldiers, Alexander, but ex-cops now? That will not gain you any popularity.”

Taylor stifled a sigh and turned to Ressler with a frustrated expression, but before he could say anything, a new–yet completely familiar–voice joined the discussion. “You’re going to have to leave that black and white morality behind you, Donald,” Raymond Reddington told him, stepping down a series of stairs, the soles of his elegant yet practical shoes sending echoes of his tread through the room. He looked at Ressler from under the brim of a blue fedora. “‘ _There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy_ ,’” he quoted.

“Reddington,” Ressler replied in disbelief. They’d been trying for over a week to contact him, and even Mr. Kaplan had come up empty. She’d reported that Liz was with Aram and Samar in Morocco, but no one knew quite where Reddington had gone. Kessler wanted to speak to Liz directly, but for now only coded messages were passing between the two bases.

Bases. He really was starting to think of this as a war.

“Madame Lo runs a very clean and efficient business. She deals casually in opium, but also pays a team of doctors and therapists to help her more chronic customers. Her employees are just that: employees. Healthcare, dental, paid vacation. They earn a salary, plus commission for their work.” Reddington shrugged. “We pay handsomely for a weekend getaway at a spa, with massages and skin care and all sorts of services that people are paid to do to our bodies. Why not sex? Why is sex so very different? It isn’t, to anyone who’s managed to escape the Puritan mindset.”

He said something softly in a Chinese dialect to Lo Baozha, who smiled and patted his cheek. “Good evening, Raymond, gentlemen,” she said. Reddington watched her leave with a small smile of fondness before turning his attention to Ressler and Taylor.

“So you’re the message,” Taylor guessed.

“I’m the message,” Reddington confirmed.

Ressler finally holstered his own pistol and stepped forward. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“I know.” Ressler waited for the inevitable snide remark about his abilities to track Reddington, but it never came. That was surprising. He looked a little closer at Reddington’s face and saw the weariness etched into it. He looked older, tense. He’d lost weight; his suit, though as excellent in quality as always, hung just a bit less crisply than usual.

He remembered everything Ferris had wanted him to tell Reddington, along with Mr. Kaplan’s warnings against doing so. Despite the DNA test she had run, she still had her doubts. _We’ve seen synthetic DNA manipulation before_ , she’d told Ressler, _and the cabal has had ample opportunity to take a sample_.

“Red,” Ressler began, but then stopped. He had no idea what Taylor really knew about Hannah, and perhaps now wasn’t the time or place.

Reddington nailed him with that piercing look of his, the one that saw straight through anything he might or might not say. “Mr. Taylor,” he said, turning back to the mercenary, “I have need of your assistance in getting to your employer.”

“Forget it,” Taylor replied. “I’m not in the business of betrayal. I won’t lead you to Persephone.”

Reddington shook his head slightly. “I don’t need you to lead me to her. I know where she is. I need your assistance recovering her, and if you waste too much more of my time, we’re only going to bring back a body bag.”

Taylor didn’t react, but Ressler heard the edge in Reddington’s voice. Did he know, somehow? “Taylor,” he said, “you can trust him.”

Reddington’s eyebrows lifted. “High praise, Donald,” he murmured.

Taylor looked back and forth between the two men before making up his mind. “We have an arrangement,” he began. “There are check-ins. If she goes more than seventy-two hours without making contact at one of the pre-arranged drop sites, we have very specific orders. One of those orders is that we don’t go in after her.”

“Because if you do, and you all get killed, what happens?” Red pushed, narrowing his eyes. “What’s her failsafe?”

“She calls it ‘The Nemesis Protocol’,” Taylor supplied.

“‘Nemesis’?” Ressler repeated. “Like the Greek god? What is it with her and Greece?”

“She had a book,” Red replied absently as he chewed his bottom lip in thought. He seemed unaware of having spoken, and certainly wasn’t cognizant of the confused look Taylor threw him. In that moment, Ressler realized that Reddington did know the truth somehow. Had Kaplan told him, after all? Gotten some kind of message through?

“Call your men in, Mr. Taylor. We have planning to do.”

“I have my orders,” he repeated stubbornly. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, Mr. Reddington, as you don’t know me and you don’t know us. You certainly don’t know Persephone. She walked through fire to save us, and we would do the same. But with that trust comes the understanding and respect that if our leader gives us orders like this, they’re for a damned good reason. I don’t like it, and she knows I don’t like it, but she also knows that I’ll follow it to the letter and that’s why she gave me the responsibility to see it done.”

Ressler tensed for the inevitable confrontation, ready to step between the two men. Red was on edge, in a way he’d never seen from the man who was always calm and collected. “She’s on a ship,” Red told them, his voice low and rough, “in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s a warship; an impenetrable floating fortress. On board there are not only highly trained officers of the United States Navy, but also the most vicious members of the cabal and a sociopathic assassin turned crime lord that they have under their thumb. Every day for the past week, she has been hauled out of her cell, beaten, and tortured. And it will continue until she’s dead.”

He removed his hat and ran a hand over his head before stepping forward. “I could tell you all sorts of threatening things, Mr. Taylor. I could tell you that for every bruise and scrape and broken bone I find on her body, I will inflect a dozen upon you. I could tell you that for every time you answer ‘no’, I will cut off another slice of your tongue. I could tell you that if you don’t give me access to your military resources, I will have you beaten senseless, stuff every cavity on your body with the shipment of weed you just smuggled in over the Canadian border, and leave you gift-wrapped on MS-13’s doorstep. I could tell you these things, and I assure you, as Agent Ressler can vouch, I will follow through on any number of them without remorse.”

He stuck his hands into his pockets and rocked back slightly on his heels. “But I won’t tell you anything threatening, Mr. Taylor, because it won’t matter what manner of hell I inflict upon you; that will be nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the hell of standing idly by and letting my daughter die a horrific, violent death.” He swallowed. “I know this, because I’ve lived it, over and over again, in my head, for twenty-five years. I never knew what happened to my child until now, and I can tell you without a doubt, Mr. Taylor, that I will not allow her to suffer the fate I feared so badly for so long. Not while I can breathe.”

Taylor stared at Reddington in disbelief and shock. For a long minute, there was nothing but silence until Ressler drew in a breath and turned away. He ran a hand over his face. He had some idea of the pain Reddington felt, but even then…

“You did it once,” Ressler said to Taylor. “Disobeyed her orders. You told me about it,” he continued when Taylor looked at him, “about the cave, and dragging her out to save her life.”

The man swallowed. “Yeah, but this is different. She needs us to follow through on Nemesis.”

“You have more resources now,” Ressler argued. “You have us, and now you have Reddington and his organization. With all of us together, we can figure out a way to do both. We can save her and carry out her mission.”

Taylor looked up at the dark ceiling and shook his head. “Yeah. Okay, yeah. Fine, Captain America, you get it your way. But don’t even think for a second I’m going to save you from the ass-kicking she’ll give you.”

“Call your men, Mr. Taylor,” Reddington repeated. He looked at Ressler, and though his face was nearly unreadable, he gave him a nod of thanks.

 

*************************

 

_Marrakesh_

_Morocco_

 

“Left,” the voice in her ear said, and Liz took a sharp turn down an alley and out of the market place. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Dembe making a similar sharp turn, only in a different direction. He knew the city layout far better than she; it was likely he was attempting to outflank their quarry. His longer legs would carry him faster around the perimeter of the market.

The scarf started to slip off her head, and she tugged it forward over her short hair. She skidded to a halt in front of a seeming dead end. “Aram?”

She could hear him speaking Arabic in a low voice to someone, and then he addressed her. “One second, tracking. He’s inside the building to your right, if you’re facing the end of the alley. Signal’s fading; there must be metal in the walls.”

“Samar?”

“Here,” she said, and a moment later she appeared over the edge of the wall that ended the alley. Liz stared in disbelief.

“How?”

“Life must be difficult when you’re that short.”

“I am not–”

“Ladies,” Aram’s voice interrupted, “you both have nice legs. One of you should use them to maybe kick in a door or something.”

Liz looked at Samar, eyebrows raised. “Someone found the sarcasm setting on the headset,” she commented.

Samar chuckled, then sneezed. “Ugh, I hate Marrakesh. I’m allergic to everything and it’s hot.” She stepped up to the wall and began hunting for the seam of the hidden door. “Why couldn’t it have been Casablanca? Casablanca is gorgeous.”

“What is Tehran like?” Liz asked, genuinely curious. Samar glanced over her shoulder, assessing her actual interest. “I’ve never been,” she added, but it felt sort of feeble. Of course she’d never been; it wasn’t exactly a hotspot destination for an American tourist.

Samar gave her a small smile. “It’s nice. We have seasons there; it’s below a big mountain range. It can be a beautiful city. I loved growing up there, even as hard as it could be in the Eighties. It’s so big now, and growing. I would love to...well, it’s a big city. There’s lots of wonderful architecture, and it’s very green. Far greener than you would expect. It’s really very lovely now.”

Something in Samar’s voice struck a chord in Liz, and she reached out and squeezed the other woman’s shoulder briefly in solidarity. It had never really occurred to her before that Samar was an outcast, a fugitive from her own country. She had been living this life that Liz had fallen into, and for much longer. Samar at least had the backing of another government at one point, but that proved a tenuous and easy to sever bond. Israel had cut her loose from Mossad.

“Aram?” Liz checked in.

“He’s still in the same location.”

“Or the tracking chip is,” Samar commented. “This was not as sophisticated as the one you used to have on Reddington. Let’s hope he hasn’t dug it out.”

Liz backed up a few steps so she could peer up at the roof, and her heel caught on something. “Samar,” she called, looking down at the edge of a rusted handle nestled between cobblestones. She knelt down and traced a jagged outline of a circle with her finger where the street dust had been disturbed

Samar joined her and they exchanged a look. Samar drew out her weapon and aimed it down, along with her flashlight. She thumbed off the safety as Liz held her own gun in one hand and and pulled up on the handle with the other. It was heavy, but she managed to shift it; the entire iron lid had been embedded with cobblestones to disguise it from passerby.

There was nothing at the mouth of the tunnel, but there was an iron ladder. “If this ends up being a sewer,” Samar commented, “just go ahead and shoot me before the cholera sets in. Or the dysentery.”

She wiped the sweat from her forehead. "Luckily, this isn't the Oregon Trail."

"What?" Samar squinted up at her against the bright midday sky, then looked back down at the hole.

“What’s happening?” Aram’s voice buzzed in both their ears.

“Liz found a sewer.”

“The nearest sewer line is about four streets over to the east, so I don’t think that’s a sewer,” Aram replied. “In fact, I don’t see any access tunnels at all on the city schematics, so be careful. That’s probably an older tunnel that the city considers deactivated or filled in.”

Samar holstered her gun and pulled her headscarf down so she could see better in the tunnel. “This guy better be able to lead us to Karakurt,” she growled, twisting her hair up and pinning it quickly in place so that it stayed out of her way. She handed the flashlight to Liz. “I’ll go first. Cover me.”

She nodded and held her weapon at the ready. “Aram? We might cut out for a bit. If you don’t hear from us in about twenty minutes, then we might have a problem. Dembe, you caught all that?”

“Yes,” Dembe’s low voice responded. “Baz and I will continue to cover the other exits. Baz?”

“Roger,” came the gruff reply from the mercenary.

“Aram, see if you can find any older city maps that might tell us where these tunnels lead. If you can find plausible exits that aren’t this building, give them to Dembe.”

“You got it, boss.”

Boss. Good Lord. She hopped down the ladder after Samar landed on her feet and called out an all clear. Samar looked to her expectantly, waiting for direction on which way to head as the tunnel forked. Liz took a moment to gather her wits.

“If my sense of direction is correct,” Liz whispered, “we want to go that way.”

Samar looked down the tunnel where she pointed and nodded her agreement. “Let’s do it.” They raised their guns and began to step gently through the tunnel, Samar’s flashlight sweeping out ahead of them. The tunnel, thank heavens, was dry.

Her foot sent an animal bone–probably a rat–scattering across the stone, and her heart rate sped up. Black shadows crept into the corners of her vision, and all of a sudden she found it difficult to breathe. She gripped her gun harder, but her hands began to shake. The ground seemed to drop out from beneath her feet and she felt a terrible sense of vertigo and weightlessness.

Dimly, she registered that Samar was urgently whispering her name, but all she could hear was the echo of footsteps, the swish of a trenchcoat, and the scattering of bone fragments across stone. The yellow glow of light from a lantern danced across her vision, and over and over again she saw her hands stabbing, cutting, hitting. That damned smile. He wouldn’t stop smiling, even through the blood.

Liz tried to lift her hands to sweep the terrible vision away, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. Blackness continued to crowd her vision, and she shook her head vigorously to get rid of it. Dizziness took hold of her, and then...nothing.

 

*************************

 

_San Francisco, California_

_The United States_

 

Red had poured himself the scotch about an hour ago, but it still sat untouched on the office table. The bottle and the glass had appeared earlier, at around the same time Ressler had made himself scarce. Red had pulled him aside from the planning session, requesting any and all information the man seemed to possess about Hannah Ferris. About Charlotte.

Ressler had related everything that Ferris had told him. He hesitated a little over relating the results of the DNA test that Kate had demanded, obviously fearing that Red would be furious at the results not being relayed immediately. But Kate was right to be cautious. He knew he ought to be, as well, but it was difficult. For the first time in a very, very long time he felt as though he was treading a knife’s edge between sanity and a violent breakdown.

Ressler was more perceptive than Red gave him credit for; rather than expressing his sympathy with empty words, he merely fetched a bottle of scotch and then absented himself, giving Red what he needed most.

Time to think.

But he couldn’t think, he could only feel, and it was too much. He placed his head in his hands, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. Good God, the hell his sweet little girl had gone through–he played it in his mind, his imagination filling in the gaps in his knowledge.

The utter helplessness and failure that had gripped him that Christmas Eve now settled again around his heart like a stone. He wanted to cry out, to scream, to throw something, but he wouldn’t allow himself that release. He needed to hold on to it, to mold the pain into fury. Only fury would see him through the next forty-eight hours.

He might have been helpless before, but he was not helpless now.

A knock came at the office door and Red inhaled slowly, rubbing his hands over his face and gaining control of himself. “Come in,” he called.

The door opened and in the dim light he saw a familiar face that he hadn’t expected to see. “Harold,” he said, standing up. “This is a surprise.”

Harold Cooper’s tall frame filled the doorway, and he slid through, closing the door behind him. “Reddington,” he acknowledged with a nod.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to help.” Cooper brushed the brick dust off the seat across the table from Red and took a seat. He set a stack of files down. “These are notes, compiled from various sources that I’ve been pulling. Dr. Ferris’s Nemesis Protocol...she’s been collecting information for years, essentially building a new fulcrum. It seems I was primary contact on her list of potential whistleblowers."

Red took one of the folders offered and opened it. He frowned down at what it contained. Pictures of refugees, Rwandan, if he placed the date stamps correctly. There were also pages of notes, coordinates, photographs of various landscapes. Then he connected the dots–the missing Rwandan refugees that were presumed by the UN to have been executed by Congolese rebels under Laurent Kabila and he looked more closely at the notes.

_MI6 intervention...training...oil concession...cobalt...copper mines...shell companies...diversion of relief funds from the UN…_

He looked up sharply. “There’s more of this?”

Cooper nodded. “Afghanistan, Iraq, all the recent conflicts. She’s even been looking into the funding sources for the Islamic State. Where the information from the fulcrum stops, she’s begun. But she did it smartly, Red. She’s the new generation of spy: she didn’t collect it all in one place to be easily hidden.” He smiled, his expression almost proud. Red recalled that he had worked with her, in Afghanistan. Had they been close at all? Had Cooper been able to be, even for a minute, the father that she was missing?

A small, very human part of him was jealous of the time Cooper had spent with her that he had not. But more than anything, he felt some sense of relief, of gratitude, that there were people in her life better than Alan Fitch and his ilk. That she might have gotten some sense of family from her fellow soldiers, from friends.

Cooper leaned forward, placing his arms on the table and lacing his fingers together. “I’m told there’s more like this. This is simply what Alex Taylor had conveniently to hand. We’ll need Aram Mojtabai and whatever other hacktivists you can gather. The Nemesis Protocol is, from what I understand, an instruction sheet of sorts. None of it makes sense to me, but you know how Aram is with data patterns. He’ll be able to assemble it faster than anyone.”

“Clever,” Red murmured, picking up another file and paging through the currently incomplete information. “Very clever.”

She had been five the first time she checkmated him. He had underestimated her capability of understanding strategy, but she had always excelled at puzzles.

_Who’s my little codebreaker?_

_Stop teaching her to lie, Ray. It’s bad enough with you._

He winced at the memory and set the file aside. Cooper was speaking, and he hadn’t paid a bit of attention. “I’m sorry?”

“There’s a rumor,” Cooper said softly. “It’s going around downstairs. I think it may have been circulated intentionally to sooth Ferris’s men. They were worried whether they should trust you or not. Why would you be so concerned about her?”

He reached for the scotch at that point and took a sip. “Ressler didn’t tell you?”

“Said it wasn’t his place.” Cooper paused. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” He left it there. Cooper could do with it what he would.

Cooper sat in silence for a few minutes, and then he nodded. “I’ll continue working on this end of things.” He stood, meeting Red’s gaze for a moment before shifting it away again. Of course: Cooper was a father. He understood.

Red exhaled through his nose and then moved the scotch away. Now was really not the time, not on so little sleep. “Thank you.”

Cooper paused at the door. “She’s strong, Red. Damn near unbreakable. I know what she went through in Afghanistan, and it could have crippled her, emotionally and physically. But she knows how to survive.” He shook his head slightly. “Despite everything she’s had to do in her life, she’s a good person.”

Cooper left the implication that the same held true for Red hanging in the air, then disappeared through the door. He left it standing open so that the sounds of the men planning downstairs drifted up from below. Red stood, lifted his jacket off the back of the chair, then shrugged it onto his shoulder and headed back into the fray. There was a lot of planning to be done, and they’d have to accomplish it with near pinpoint precision.

Get in. Get the girl. Get out. Give Admiral Abraham his damn boat back.

He tugged his hat in place and got to work.

 

***************************

 

_Marrakesh_

_Morocco_

 

Liz jerked awake with a rush of adrenaline and reached for her gun. Her hand found only blankets beneath her fingers, and she sat upright quickly, trying to get her bearings. Her head spun with the sudden movement. She cradled it between her hands and closed her eyes until the pounding faded.

When it did, she opened her eyes and took in the silk brocade blankets and colorfully tiled walls. The room she’d taken at the house Aram and Samar were staying in. There was a soft knock at her door and it opened to reveal Samar carrying a steaming cup of tea. “Hey,” she said, closing the door behind her with her foot, “how are you feeling?”

“Confused,” Liz answered honestly, tucking her legs beneath her and adjusting her seat on the bed. She took the teacup and saucer and sniffed. It was that wonderful, pungent spearmint tea that was everywhere in the city. “What happened?”

Samar reached over and turned on a small lamp with a stretched sheepskin lampshade dyed orange in the typical Moroccan fashion. Another light with a punched tin globe around it hung from the ceiling in the corner, but the lamp was enough to brighten the room in the late afternoon glow. She sat down opposite Liz on the bed. “What do you remember?”

“I remember going into the tunnel,” Liz replied, sipping the tea. “After that...nothing, really.”

“You had a panic attack,” Samar told her. “A very bad one. Bad enough that you had trouble breathing, and it cut off your oxygen supply. You passed out, and I had to carry you out of the tunnel and get help.”

Liz frowned. “That’s never happened to me before. I don’t understand.”

“Are you claustrophobic?”

“No.” She sipped the tea again.

Samar pulled her long legs up and sat cross-legged, the same way Liz sat. “What about the dark?”

Liz shook her head. “No, I have no problems with the dark. Or being underground.” Was that true, though? Her heart skipped a beat as the dusty smell in the tunnel came back to her. It had smelled like...like Paris.

Samar noticed the change in her expression. “What is it?”

Liz shook her head. “It’s nothing.” She attempted a smile and sipped again at the tea. “Maybe it was the heat.”

“Liz,” Samar insisted. “What is it? Something happened to you, something bad enough to give you PTSD. I know the signs,” she added when Liz tried to interrupt her. “I’ve seen it before. I’ve had it before. It’s nothing to be ashamed of; it doesn’t make you weak, it just makes you human. But I will tell you that ignoring it is dangerous, and if I don’t know what triggers you, I’m not going into the field with you again. It’s too risky, for both our sakes.”

 _It doesn’t make you weak, it just makes you human_. Liz looked away, her throat closing up. Tears began to pool and she blinked rapidly, trying to keep them at bay. Damn it, Samar was right. She’d been denying it, not facing it, telling herself that she was strong enough to survive and just keep going. _No one can kill someone in cold blood and come out okay on the other side._

She felt the gentle pressure of a hand on her bare foot and looked down. “What happened to your feet, Liz?”

Haltingly, she began to tell Samar the specifics of what had happened in Paris. She’d only mentioned previously that they had run into some trouble, and that much only when Aram had questioned some of the scars on her neck and head. Before she knew it, everything came tumbling out: the party, the tunnels, Owen Richards, her desperate hunt for Reddington. She told her about shooting Connelly, about her memories and everything she’d learned of how she and Red were connected. Her mother. The program. Her suspicions about Hannah Ferris and why Reddington had disappeared.

She half-spoke, half-sobbed for the better part of the evening. Everything came out in a flood, encouraged by gentle questions from Samar, and from Aram, who had joined them along with plates of food. Lamb, chicken, couscous, the spices fragrant enough to whet even her flagging appetite. More of the ever-present tea. Three calls to prayer echoed across the city as Liz spoke, and eventually her throat ran too dry for even the tea to help.

Samar had returned to her perch on the end of the bed, and Liz leaned into Aram’s friendly, comforting embrace. He patted her shoulder gently as she finally gained control of her breath. “God,” Liz complained hoarsely, “I’m a wreck.”

The two of them reached out to her simultaneously, Aram’s arm squeezing her midsection as Samar placed a hand on her leg. “No,” Samar corrected. “You’ve just been through hell and back. You’re not a wreck, Liz, you’re whole. Injured, but whole. That takes amazing strength.”

“I’m sorry to take up your evening.”

“Where else would we be?” Aram asked.

Liz sat up and ran a hand through ruffled hair. She raised one eyebrow and glanced between Aram and Samar significantly. “The walls are kinda thin, guys.”

“I’ll get you some ear plugs,” Samar offered, and they laughed. It felt good to laugh, especially with them.

Liz shook her head. “For a while, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see either of you again. I know we were just co-workers, but…”

“We’re friends, Liz,” Aram corrected. He reached for a piece of bread and some lamb. “Practically family, with all the time we ended up spending together.”

“I never thanked you for the cupcakes,” she said. “I’m not very good family, Aram, I never had much practice. I loved my father, my adoptive father, but he wasn’t perfect. Neither was I. Red did his best to try and give me some shot at a normal life, but you know what they say about the road to hell.” She sighed. “You can hide the memories, the sounds and sights, but not the feelings. He had no real idea...he loved his own daughter so much, I don’t think he could fathom how any parent could do otherwise.”

“Do you think…” Samar began to ask, but then let the question hang. It was easy enough to finish, though. _Do you think he’ll find her?_ Even her own men hadn’t known where she’d gone, and they had started to worry. When Aram had told her that, she’d felt the knot of worry in her stomach grow even tighter.

There was no part of her that begrudged Ray his frantic search for his daughter, no lingering wisps of jealousy. The foundation beneath their relationship had fundamentally shifted from dependency to partnership. She had felt so powerless for so long when it came to his presence in her life that it took her a long time to accept that she held the same power and and sway over him. Nearly as long as it took him to accept it, himself.

She worried for him, feared for him: his safety, his health, his poor, battered heart. There were so many unresolved questions about Hannah Ferris/Charlotte Clarke, so many years of pain an absence. “He’s not chasing a phantom any longer,” she said. “If anyone can find her, it’s him.”

 

*********************************

TBC


	17. Charlotte Clarke - Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going back through and renaming chapters after some pertinent characters to give it more of a TBL feel. This chapter and the next are essentially a two-parter. Additionally, this story will be wrapping in a chapter or two, and then continuing in a sequel called "Nemesis".
> 
> Thank you everyone for all the wonderful feedback you've given. Your comments mean quite a lot, and really do help me see what is and isn't sticking with the plot. They definitely encourage me to keep working, and I'm very glad you're all enjoying reading as much as I'm enjoying writing.
> 
> Again, thanks go out to my awesome beta readers, deandratb and figure_of_dismay.

_U.S.S. Lake Superior_

_The Pacific Ocean_

  
Charlotte opened her eyes and took a deep breath, holding it in and then exhaling slowly to assess the condition of her lungs. Not as bad as she’d let Jacob believe, but not great. There was definitely some infection setting in from the untended cuts and scrapes, not to mention all the fun time spent breathing recycled air.

Billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money spent on upgraded weapons systems, and they couldn’t change the damn air filters? She now begrudged them every cent taken out of Hannah Ferris’s federal stipend.

The corner of her mouth twitched as she realized how she’d already begun to think of herself as Charlotte again, leaving the Hannah Ferris alias in the past. It was how she dealt with shifting from one alias to another: start thinking about them in the third person, objectively, distancing her new self from the old.

It was a surprise how quickly this new shift had taken place in her mind. She had been Hannah Ferris for so long, in between all the other aliases, had adopted Hannah as her real self. Her military records, her doctorate, even the MMA championship belts from the little indie fighting rings she’d worked with to ostensibly pay her way through Princeton and keep her money trail clear...they all belonged to Hannah Ferris.

Charlotte Clarke had nothing.

Well, she reflected, that wasn’t entirely true. She had a father, out there somewhere, who might or might not be aware of her survival yet. She had a lucky talisman, buried in a secret box back in DC - a little keychain bought at a mall in 1989. She could still remember that day. The brightly colored tiles of the food court in the mall, the smell of fast food, her father stealing her french fries while her mother reached around his back and stole his. All the giggling. Her dad, leaning back in his chair with those aviator sunglasses, quoting the jokes from Top Gun.

Charlotte Clarke had memories. They were largely good memories. Playing piano with her father: fingers racing across the keys as they played In the Hall of the Mountain King as a duet, reaching around each other to hit the right octaves while their friends laughed. Christmas - not that Christmas, but others. The house.

He’d destroyed the house in Arlington, probably in an effort to move past what had happened. Gas leak, the news said, but she knew enough about explosives. She bought the land. A development corporation that she used as a shell. They did good work, though, she made sure of it. She’d watched a lot of Trading Spaces while recovering from a concussion and broken ribs in London one time, back in the late ‘90s. Nineteen and living in London, and she just watched telly with the elderly lady from the flat next door. Mrs. Alberley. Lovely lady. Taught Charlotte to cross-stitch and knit.

She would build a new house there, then sell it to a new family. Let them make a new life there. Renewal. There was probably a farming metaphor somewhere in her mind for that, but she was too tired to think of it.

The door opened a sliver and she turned her head on the cot to see who entered. If it was Jacob again, she might just spill everything to keep from having to bear his psychotherapy sessions. It wasn’t, thankfully, but this person she didn’t know. She’d only caught a glimpse of him, a sliver of uniform, a wide-eyed look, a handsome face with a dark complexion.

“Hello,” she said, glancing at the nametag and insignia, “Lieutenant Smits. Smits, really? Did your parents know you’d be a sailor, Smitty?”

The nervous young man glanced over his shoulder out of the small window set into the door. “I’ve only got a few minutes. Quick - are you allergic to penicillin?” He produced a small bag and unzipped it, pulling out a syringe.

“No,” she answered, and held out her arm. It was a gamble, but if there were antibiotics in that needle, she’d take them. If it was anything else, then they were shit out of luck. She’d long been resistant to truth serums.

“I got a message out, to an Admiral whose command I worked under before,” the man said, swabbing her arm and then giving her the dose. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but this is some serious bullshit.”

She laughed, and the laugh turned into a cough. “You have no idea.”

“I have morphine.” He raised his eyebrows.

Charlotte shook her head. “No, I need to feel. Leave the needle, though, I might change my mind.”

“Where?” Smitty looked around the small, bare cell.

“The sink. The needle’s long enough that it’ll catch in the pipe bend and stay put.”

He did as she requested, moving quickly and competently, though obviously on edge. This was probably the first time he’d ever disobeyed orders. She lifted herself up slightly. “Listen to me, Kevin.”

He turned around and looked at her.

“You’re a good guy, Kevin. You need to get the rest of the good guys together and jump ship, because otherwise? You’re not making it to shore.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This vessel was commandeered by an operative from a very powerful and very secret league of people. You seen the news lately?”

He swallowed. “Yeah. I have. Some people are saying it’s all just bunk, though.”

“That’s because the people who say otherwise are either dead or scared into silence. I have the misfortune of being able to assure you that it is all true. They’re going to sink this boat and everyone on it.”

“They wouldn’t.”

“They would. And they’ll blame it on Russia. Check the course, Kevin. Not with the computer, with your eyes. Go outside, look at the stars, and tell me we’re not drifting straight toward the ballistic missile submarine bastion in the Sea of Okhotsk.”

He swallowed. “How do you know this?”

“Because I know how they work. I saw enough of the stars through a porthole to know we’re headed north, and the Sea of Okhotsk has Cold War History. When was the last time you fired the engines for a course correction?”

“Two days ago. We’re conserving fuel.”

“There will be no note of that. There will, instead, be a traceable log of mechanical failure, leading towards the story of a ship helplessly adrift and mistaken by the Russian naval defenses  for a threat. The radio is next to go, if it hasn’t already, and I guarantee you the EPIRB is also malfunctioning or missing. If you can find it, take it with you.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll figure something out. Don’t worry about me, Smitty. I told you to take all the good guys. I emphatically assure you that I am not one of them.”

 

*************************

 

_Marrakesh_

_Morocco_

 

Liz entered the large living area that Aram had affectionately dubbed the War Room with a feeling of trepidation. He had called an all-hands-on-deck meeting, and back at the Post Office, that was never a good sign. It meant he had uncovered something big.

A figure standing in the corner of the room turned around as she entered, and she paused. “Leonard!”

“Agent Keen,” Leonard Caul acknowledged in his usual stoic manner.

“What brings you here?” She sat down on one of the brightly colored poufs littered around the room, intermixed with ornately carved wooden benches. Whomever had furnished the dwelling had gone all out on traditional Moroccan flair. It wasn’t to her taste, but it amused her to think of Red lounging among the cushions, telling risqué stories and eating stuffed grape leaves. It would be just like him.

“Two pieces of troubling information,” Caul answered. He glanced around the room and made sure everyone else was present before continuing. “Dr. Lukas Madsen is dead.”

Liz frowned. The name didn’t ring a bell. “Who was this Dr. Madsen?”

“You would have met him, at least once.” Caul adjusted his glasses. “He was the lead psychologist behind what became known in some circles as the East Berlin Protocol.”

 _That_ was a term she recognized. “The program. He designed it?”

“The what, now?” Samar interjected. Liz hadn’t told them in detail about all the information she’d gleaned from Owen Richards. A part of her had been worried about how they might view her, but the rest of her had simply been too exhausted to relive it all.

“Madsen didn’t design it,” Leonard corrected, “but he streamlined and perfected it. The protocol was a series of training instructions first developed by the Stasi in East Berlin,” he continued, in Samar’s direction. “Tested on young soldiers and secret police, it was a training regimen and a set of parameters for psychological treatment that was meant to instill obedience, fervor, and nationalism.”

“It’s some real Orwellian garbage,” Aram interjected, looking up briefly from the stack of papers in his lap. “Madsen took the program and redesigned it for modern use, back in the Eighties. Of particular note: he lowered the base age to two, though there’s a special subset of notes for infants as young as four weeks. Madsen designed a program not only to train child soldiers, but to maintain that training through adulthood. He used methods I thought were only science fiction, like neuro-linguistic programming.” He shook himself.

“But he’s dead now?” Liz asked. “Is the cabal cutting its loose ends?”

“It’s likely,” Leonard answered. “But the pertinent part is that the authorities in Alaska are looking for a woman that matches your description of Dr. Hannah Ferris. If what Dembe tells me about her is true, then it’s possible she has some damaging information on the program and they were trying to cut their losses.”

“Did you find Raymond?” Dembe asked.

“No, but I found Ferris’s trail.”

“More specifically, he found Tom Keen’s trail,” Aram said. “I’m sorry, Liz.” He handed her a stack of photographs, car rentals, port registrations, and a variety of other information that all traced the movements of Tom through Alaska. “That one photo in the woods was triggered by a game camera Madsen had set up to monitor his trap line. He was living rugged in Alaska, and according to a merchant in the nearest town, was having a dispute with a neighbor over land boundaries. The neighbor kept dismantling his fur traps.”

Liz looked at the low quality capture, but it clearly showed Hannah Ferris on her knees in the snow and Tom with a gun pointed at her head. Should it have surprised her? Hurt her? It didn’t, not any longer. Despite what Tom might have wanted for himself, for Liz, she could see now that it would never happen. He was a broken human being, and there wasn’t a thing Liz could do to fix him, even if she wanted to.

She couldn’t love him anymore, couldn’t even summon the strength to love the memory of the sweet school teacher she had married. Looking at Tom now simply made her sad, partly for herself, but mostly for him. He might be a monster, might have done monstrous things, but monsters were made, not born. Tom simply didn’t know how to recognize what he was, and until he could, he would never be able to stop.

“Do you know where he took her?” she asked, her voice steady and calm.

Aram searched her face with concern before he finally nodded slightly and continued. “That’s the second bit of bad news. Dembe, can you get us into Russia?”

Liz and Samar exchanged surprised looks, but Dembe simply inclined his head. “Possibly,” he answered. “We have some contacts. Not a lot, but if it’s a port city our chances are better.”

“Why Russia?” Samar frowned at Aram.

He spread a series of charts on the floor, and they all crowded closer. It was a mixture of satellite footage and sea charts. “Seventy-two hours ago, the U.S. Navy officially reported a Ticonderoga-class warship missing: the U.S.S. Lake Superior. It was last reported docking for repairs in Juneau, Alaska, before embarking on a three week training mission in the North Pacific. According to some Pentagon sources, the comm systems are down, and the Navy is concerned about other possible mechanical failure. There is one Top Secret memo circulating that is of particular concern. A handful of mechanics were taken into custody by the CIA in Juneau, and they’re being accused of espionage and deliberate sabotage of an American warship. The men are Russian.”

“We have another source,” Leonard contributed, “Admiral Richard Abraham. Abraham says that a week ago he leaked the information about the ship to Reddington. Abraham has a source on board that was able to send a coded message back to him before communication was cut. That source says there was a prisoner on board.”

“Hannah Ferris,” Samar guessed.

“Yes,” Caul confirmed. “What troubles Admiral Abraham now is this internal memo about the Russian men in Juneau. There’s talk, he says, that the ship’s steering and engines were also sabotaged.”

“But why?” Liz asked. “Why all this simply to get at Hannah Ferris? Why not just have Tom put a bullet in her head back in Alaska?”

“It’s not just about her,” Aram explained. “They’re simply taking advantage of a plan that was already in place to sink the Lake Superior. They’re going to interrogate her, wring out all the information they can from her about what she’s got on the cabal, and then she’ll sink with the ship.”

“Sink,” Samar repeated. “Where is that ship headed?”

Aram pointed on the charts. “According to DOD satellite imagery, it’s headed straight for this area here.” His finger slid along a section of Russian coastline. “There’s a large missile bastion here. They’ll see the ship’s transgression as an act of war, and then they’ll fire on it, sinking the ship and everyone on it.”

The import of the situation finally sunk home. “Oh, God,” Liz breathed, “Reddington doesn’t know.”

“He’ll be able to figure out a rough idea, simply based on the ship’s position,” Aram said. “But if the cabal have corrupted any part of the Russian navy, which is probably a sucker bet at this point, then I guarantee you they’re not going to wait for the ship to actually be in Russian waters. They’ll make it look that way, afterward, but they’ll send out subs and sink it before it even gets close, especially if they think Reddington’s made it on board. It’s the perfect trap: they eliminate two dangerous enemies and advance their plan to push the U.S. and Russia into another Cold War standoff.”

Samar shook her head. “But who the hell wants another Cold War? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Oh yes it does,” Caul countered. “On one hand you have the ideologues, who either want communism or capitalism to triumph, and that breed hasn’t died out like you may have expected. You also have those in the middle who genuinely think the world is better off between two hegemons. Then you have the rest: profiteers who made bank robbing resources and selling weapons during all the proxy wars of the Seventies and Eighties. And then there’s all the defense contract money, the intelligence contract money. There’s significant financial motivation at play, and it’s these people who have taken over what once was a group founded to end the Cold War and prevent another from happening.”

It was the longest and most impassioned speech Liz had ever heard from Caul. “You were part of it, weren’t you? And they betrayed you, what you believed in.”

He looked at her, sharply. “Yes,” he answered.

“We need to warn Raymond.” Dembe’s voice drew her back to the present.

“We can’t,” Aram said. “That’s why Admiral Abraham agreed to speak to Mr. Caul. Whatever Mr. Reddington is planning, it’s already operational. We can’t get ahold of Ressler or the Wolves, either, which means they’re likely working with Mr. Reddington. What we need to do now is get into Russia so I can hack into their defense network and give Mr. Reddington a chance.”

Liz stared. “Aram, that’s some Bond-movie-level planning. How in the hell are you going to make that happen?”

“Prayers and elbow grease,” he answered, “well, technically, I guess, knuckle grease. From the typing. But we need to move. Dembe?”

“I’ll have a plane ready in twenty minutes.”

 

*****************************

 

_Hickam Air Field_

_Honolulu, Hawaii_

 

Ressler looked out over tarmac, his eyes falling on the two brand new stealth Black Hawks, the Super Hercules aerial transport plane, the wealth of raid equipment and soldiers all illuminated in the flood lights that held back the dark of night. Most of the men were Ferris’s, but there were also reinforcements from the mercenary crew Reddington had worked with in the past. Everyone was moving swiftly, purposefully. They needed to get airborne soon; Reddington’s well-placed bribe had only bought them so much time.

Most of the self-proclaimed Wolf Pack were Navy SEALs, which was about to come in damn handy. Ressler itched to get on board one of the choppers, but Reddington had held him back.

The man himself was barely recognizable. Gone were the customary high-end suit and hat, the casually amused demeanor. Reddington was dressed in stealth fatigues, and certainly wore them as though he was no stranger to it. It was more than the military garb, however, it was the way Reddington held himself: upright, stiff, purposeful, and undoubtedly in command. He would have made a hell of an Admiral. By now, with his intelligence and capability, Reddington would probably have made the Joint Chiefs, if everything hadn’t gone pear-shaped back in the Nineties.

It surprised him, this newfound sympathy with Reddington. He had spent so long thinking of him as the enemy, projecting all of his own values and failures onto this shadow of a villain, and hating that creation as much as he had ever hated anything. Time and again, Reddington had shattered that illusion Ressler held, but it had taken living through the past weeks to really bring home just how far off base he had always been. No wonder he’d never been able to catch the man; Ressler had barely understood his own motivations, let alone Reddington’s.

He thought of Hannah Ferris– _Charlotte Clarke_ –and shook his head slightly. Ressler didn’t completely understand what drove him now, but he was fairly certain it had less to do with the cabal’s grand plans and a lot more to do with a pair of green eyes and maddening smirk. Admitting the hold on him that she seemed to have claimed during a tear-soaked confession under the Caribbean stars was one thing...reconciling that with essentially falling head over heels for the daughter of his former enemy? Jesus, how spy-thriller cliché could his life get at this point?

Ressler turned to Reddington with a raised eyebrow, waiting in silence for whatever reason Reddington had pulled him aside. It didn’t take long. “I need you in Hokkaido, Donald.”

He fought down the instinct to argue, to demand to be there with the team. He’d had a notion that he’d be held back in some way; this was a high-risk operation and there was a wealth of training that he lacked. His hands clenched and unclenched automatically, and he swallowed down his protest. “All right,” he acknowledged after a moment.

Reddington watched him closely with that hawkish gaze of his. “I’m going to bring her back,” he said firmly, “but she’ll probably be injured. We’ll need quick and reliable medical attention, and an equally reliable safe house. My organization in Japan will be at risk, but you still have contacts.”

“I said ‘all right’,” he repeated, and Reddington nodded.

Out on the tarmac, Taylor gave the all-ready signal and Reddington moved forward. Ressler began to turn away, but heard his name and turned around to see Red facing him, uncharacteristically struggling for words. “Ressler…”

There were a lot of things that weighed heavy in that moment of silence between them; apologies, gratitude, acknowledgement. That hawkish gaze had looked straight through Ressler and recognized the source of his concern and involvement, and it hung there in the humid night air, unsaid but accepted. Ressler swallowed and cleared his throat. “I’ll see you all in Hokkaido.”

“Yeah,” Reddington replied thickly, then nodded again and continued on to the helicopter.

 

*************************

 

_Marrakesh_

_Morocco_

  
  


“Liz,” Samar said from the doorway, “I’m not going with you to Russia.”

She looked up from the weapons cache she’d been packing, surprised. “Why not?”

Samar handed her a file, and Liz took it, setting down the Glock in her hands. Strangely enough, she had yet to feel compelled to surrender her service weapon. Liz opened the file and glanced through it, then looked through it again, more slowly. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

Liz looked up sharply. “Do you think this is true?”

“I don’t know. But Borakov told me Naomi Highland received a call from Jennifer. She picked up from her mother’s tenseness that the call was being traced, but Naomi thinks she was calling from London. She recognized some of the background noise. It’s an old CIA trick from the time before you could trace a phone call.”

“London,” she said, picking up a photo out of the file. A boy, about ten, with a soccer ball under one arm and a Manchester United shirt on. He was dirty, and smiling, dark black hair all amiss. A woman with her hair wrapped in a pretty teal hijab smiled beside him, her arms proudly around his shoulders. “Sharzeh Balkhi,” she read off his name.

“If it’s true, then that’s why Jennifer is in England. That’s what she’s after.”

“But why?” Liz looked at another photo, this one with the woman, Azar Balkhi, without the hijab, and a tall, handsome Persian man that looked an awful lot like Samar. Between them stood the more familiar Hannah Ferris. They were all dressed in desert fatigues. “Why target your brother’s family?”

Samar shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t even know they existed, which is why I’m uncertain that it’s true. This woman, Azar, was married to another man at the time her son was born, but if the boy is simply the son of an importer, why have a file on him at all? Why is that file wrapped up with all the information about Shahin? More to the point, this boy looks almost exactly like my brother did at that age.” She sighed, and swept her long hair over her shoulder. “They have some connection to Hannah Ferris, and Jennifer might believe they have damaging information. Or it’s all out of revenge, or leverage over the rest of you through me. I don’t know,” she repeated.

“It could be a trap,” Liz commented reluctantly.

She nodded. “Yeah, it could be. That’s why I’m going alone.”

“Samar-”

“I didn’t come here to argue, Liz,” Samar cut her off. “Go to Russia. Aram will need your help.”

Liz sighed. “You’ll have to tell him. I’m not keeping secrets from Aram. He doesn’t deserve that.”

She smiled slightly, a strange mixture of melancholy and love. “I already have.” She took back the file from Liz. “Good luck. I hope you get them back.”

Liz nodded again, her throat tight. “Yeah. You, too. Wait,” she said. “We have a guy in Paris, Theodore Alleline. He’s MI6, though, and he might be able to help you in London. When he asks you what color the sky is–”

“It’s red,” Samar finished.

 

****************************

 

_U.S.S. Lake Superior_

_The Pacific Ocean_

 

Smitty-Boy had only agreed to the escape plan provided that Charlotte was a part of it. “I hope your husband deserves you,” she had told him, wincing while he dabbed the cuts on her back with antiseptic. “Because if he doesn’t, you and I are going to move in together and be platonic best friends for the rest of our lives. Eventually I might fall in love with you and try to persuade you to join the other team, like Madonna in that terrible movie where she pretended to be English. Do you cook? I’m a great baker, but I could burn water.”

“Stop babbling,” Smits had told her shortly. “We’ll be ready to go by 19:00. I’ll give you the signal. You’re sure you can deal with this alone in your condition?”

“I’m sure. You disabled the radar? Sonar?”

“Yeah.”

“Then get going. What’s his name, by the way?”

Smitty paused. “Damon.” He cleared his throat. “I’m the lucky one.”

“Smitty, if you don’t see me by the designated time, you go. Understand? You leave me behind. That’s an order.”

He smiled. “I don’t have to take orders from you.”

Four hours later and footsteps on the decking above her cell signaled the changing of the guard and her eventual withdrawal for evening torture. Humans were innate creatures of habit, and though her captors had attempted to vary their routines randomly, there was still a pattern. She had identified it to Smitty, and accurately predicted that today would be a Pattern Four, Variation Five day: runny porridge breakfast with burnt toast, a half cup of water, two pee breaks for the morning guard who drank too much coffee, a cigarette at one o’clock for the afternoon guard, a two o’clock bout of beatings, two sexual threats, one half-hearted threat from Jacob to cut out the sexual threats or else, and then the booze-induced snooze by the evening guard until the change that coincided with “eight bells” - the last “dog watch”, that odd half-shift created to break up the watches so no sailor had to repeat the same in a row. It generally coincided with the emptying of the mess after dinner.

Smits had informed her that the ship was running on a skeleton crew as it was, so there wouldn’t be much chaos on deck to hide themselves in. Hopefully, it would be enough. Charlotte closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the approaching footsteps, mapping out the corridors in her head from the Doppler shift of tread echoing on metal decking. Ever since she could remember, she had mapped out things in her head by relative sound.

She remembered being able to navigate the old house in Arlington in the pitch dark during a blackout, simply by the way her feet echoed on the floor and stairs. Sound, for some reason, simply stuck in her memory. To this day, she still couldn’t read sheet music, but could play a song with near perfect precision after hearing it once. Hell, her safety deposit box in Prague that held the most sensitive information she’d collected over the years was protected not by a passcode, but by a pass- _rhythm_.

Everything else pertaining to her rather deadly skillset had been drilled, programmed, or beaten into her, but this was hers. She’d always had this talent. The more she thought about it, the more Charlotte Clarke had going for her.

Right now, though, she needed all of Hanna Ferris’s vicious training.

She smiled grimly as she fished the hidden morphine syringe out of the sink and tucked it under her pillow. The evening escort to torture was another smoker, and he had a nasty, chronic cough. Morphine overdose was a distinctly unpleasant way to go, but considering the cracked rib and numerous disgusting gropes she had to remember this gentleman by, she didn’t anticipate losing any sleep.

He shuffled in, as usual, with a leer when he saw her curled up on the mattress. “Wakey, wakey,” he crooned, his hand reaching out and brushing over her shoulder, her breast. She waited until he had shifted the center of his balance to better cup one in his filthy hand. Quickly, she reached up and grabbed his wrist firmly, pulled him forward, and then jammed the needle into his neck. She pushed the full load of morphine into his bloodstream, pinning his hand to the wall with her boot while she held his other arm at bay with her shoulder. His fingers scraped at her back, her hair. The needle emptied, she tossed it to the far side of the room, then slammed her forearm hard into his windpipe. He spun away, gasping for air and unable to call for help.

It took him mere moments to collapse under the weight of the morphine and his inability to get enough oxygen. She took his keycard, his gun, his knife, his radio, and anything else even semi-useful she could find in his pockets. Always loot the corpses. Jacob’s rule, espoused over beer and video games back at one of the Major’s seedy little hideaways, but a good rule of thumb anyway.

Squaring her shoulders, she took a deep breath and readied herself for combat, running through the same mental checklist she used before preparing for a mission, an assignment, even her martial arts matches. Right, she thought, mentally quoting her favorite old commercial, time to make the donuts.

 

***********************

 

_Okha_

_Sakhalin Island, Russia_

 

A drab, grey little town on the edge of nowhere, Okha was the seat of the petroleum industry in the Sea of Okhotsk. With all the migrant rig workers coming in and out of town, it wasn’t that hard to sneak them all through, even Dembe. In Russia, nothing raised eyebrows more than a large black man, but there were enough African workers on the docks, ships, and rigs that here at least, he could move with relative ease.

It was Liz that had the most difficulty, as an attractive and fairly young woman. There were few women in town, and those that were either sold booze or...other forms of recreation. She had pulled a smelly knit cap over her head, padded out a mechanic’s jumpsuit, and smeared dirt and oil all over her face, and still she got cat-called. The sooner Aram worked his magic, the better.

“Couldn’t you have done this from literally anywhere else in the world?” she hissed acidly, watching him type first on one laptop and then another. Their hideout was not particularly secure; the only thing between them and any possible incursion was herself and Dembe and their handguns.

“This part? Yes,” Aram confirmed. Liz traded a look of exasperation with Dembe. “But we need to cover our tracks, and for that I need it to look like just another piece of your typical government incompetence and lack of communication. For that, I need bribes and local officials and,” he added, glancing apologetically at Liz, “a spy.”

“I am _not_ a spy!”

“No,” Dembe agreed. “But you’re the closest we have.”

Liz stared at him and bit back all of the vehement exclamations that were on the tip of her tongue. Dembe seemed to understand her frustration, despite not voicing her anger. He reached out and clapped her shoulder. “You can do this, Elizabeth. I believe in you. Raymond believes in you.”

She let out a breath. “My mother was the spy, Dembe, not me.” _I don’t want to be like her_ , came the surprising thought. She stood up, pushing back her metal chair. Cold metal, cold room; the harshness of this rough place surrounded her everywhere she looked.

After all the tragedy in the early years of her life, she had been left–purposefully and otherwise–with barely any memory of her mother. Just an impression of a voice, a shadow notion of a person who filled in that shape of ‘mother’. She’d made up stories: a famous ballerina, an opera singer, a secret princess in hiding from a jealous government. This phantom mother embodied all of the characteristics Liz had wanted to believe herself capable of attaining: kindness, beauty, strength, courage.

Katerina Rostova might have had some of these characteristics, but she had also been manipulative, dangerous, self-serving, and fanatic. She might have loved Liz, after a fashion, but Liz wasn’t just a child to Katerina, she was a tool to be shaped and used.

Liz had once accused Red of using people the same way, and though he did at times–she imagined the habits of a lifetime of intelligence work were difficult to break–he also felt beholden to an innate sense of empathy. He would use people, without hesitation, but he hated it. And so he hated himself for the twisted monster he felt he had to become in order to survive.

Frankly, Liz had no desire to go down either path. She didn’t want to use people because she believed in a grand plan, nor did she want to be the master manipulator because she had to be. This notion of greater good was never one that had sat well on her conscience. Which was why, of course, keeping Tom prisoner and then what she’d done to Owen Richards still made her sick to her stomach. She knew that darkness, that willingness to go to extremes to achieve her goals–to _survive_ –was in her, was part of her personality.

Liz stared out the small window that faced the sea, holding herself at the edge of it so that she wasn’t visible from the street. She didn’t want to end up like either her mother or like Red; she lived in constant fear now that her love wouldn’t be enough to pull Red back from the brink as it was. She didn’t have the strength to carry both of them.

But she sure as hell wouldn’t let him die out on that boat, not while there was something she could do to stop it. Even before she had acknowledged to herself just how much he meant to her, she hadn’t ever been able to leave him to face danger alone. She sure as hell wouldn’t start now.

“What do you need?” she asked, and when she turned around, Dembe had already prepped a briefcase with a Venezuelan ID card. That was a relief: she was pretty fluent in Spanish, Mexico being one of her favorite vacation spots. Venezuela had a huge petroleum industry; being an official from one of their companies was good cover. “Okay,” she nodded, feeling a little more confident, “Okay, this will work.”

 

***************************

 

_The U.S.S. Lake Superior_

_Pacific Ocean_

 

It was hell of a gamble, betting that the radar and sonar systems were down–or at least compromised–but Red had been at this game long enough to calculate the odds. A big incident like the one the cabal was trying to trigger would mean various international committees and investigations, and not all of them would be under the cabal’s influence. It had to look real.

“They’re saying the prisoner on board is Masha Rostova,” Admiral Abraham had told him during their last call. “Elizabeth Keen....Which means they’ll have reason to pin it on Russia. They can say they got a confession out of her, and the Russians didn’t want her to stand trial.”

That claim told both men everything they needed to know about that ship. Red had hung up the phone with more trepidation than ever. This was already a risky operation, and the fact that they were likely headed straight into the teeth of the Russian Navy made it even more so. When he’d found Alex Taylor bent over satellite imagery, it was obvious the soldier knew enough to piece together the general idea. He’d simply looked up at Red, scanned his expression, then nodded once. “We’re not going anywhere,” Taylor told Reddington. “Mission’s still a ‘go’.”

The helicopters got them within range, dropping the zodiacs portside where cloud cover would make it hard to spot them against the horizon. Red, Taylor, and four others dropped individually closer to the ship, starboard side, to flank. It had been years since he’d parachuted, even longer since he’d dropped into the ocean and not onto land. The last time he’d done so as part of a military operation, Charlotte had been two. He’d thought of her, then, as he plunged into the cold waters of the North Atlantic, just as he thought of her now in the somewhat warmer waters of the North Pacific.

_Hold on, sweetheart. I’m coming for you._

 

*******************

 

“How in the hell did you get the drop on six guys?” Smitty whispered, impressed.

“I’m a fucking ninja,” Charlotte hissed. “Help me get this cabinet open.”

“We need to get to the lifeboat.” Smits stuck his name pin in the slot she’d managed to open and popped the lock. “Guns will just weigh us down.”

The weapons cabinet popped open. “You’d think they’d be more concerned about mutiny and use better locks on their weapons cache, but I guess all that upgrade money went to the missiles.”

“Which aren’t even on board,” Smits agreed. He paused. “This is the explosives cabinet.”

“Yes.”

He reached out and touched her shoulder. “I told you that you’re coming with us.”

She sighed as she loaded up a bag with C4. “Smitty. Listen to me. I appreciate the thought, I do. I know what your conscience is telling you to do, and I respect the hell out of it. No,” she continued, holding up a hand when he would interrupt, “listen. These people, the ones behind all this? They stole everything from me: my parents, my home, my life, my self-respect and dignity, my childhood. I have spent years fighting back as best I could without them knowing, undermining them in every way I could find. Now they’ve declared open warfare, and I swear to God, I am not going to let them win. I will stop them every way I can. I’m going to load the engines with C4, and then–maybe–if there’s enough time, I will find you in the lifeboat, but you don’t wait. You get your men out so you can tell the world the truth.” She swallowed. “I need you to do that.”

He watched her with a closed expression, then reached out and pulled down another C4 charge. “Samuels has an order to leave within the hour if I miss check-in. Let’s do this.”

“You have a husband, a home.”

“That I could never go back to, never look in the eye, if I walked away from this right now. You want to talk about oaths and fighting? I took an oath to protect my country and everyone in it, and if that means going rogue to stop a senseless war from claiming countless American lives, then I will do it. They can drag my ass in front of as many tribunals as they want, if it means that people will stay safe and not have to live in fear.” He shook his head. “My mom used to tell me stories about radiation drills and bomb shelters. You think I want my sister’s kid, or my future kids, to grow up in that world? I’ve fought against fear all my life: fear of my blackness, fear of my gayness. Fear doesn’t win when I’m on watch, Charlie.”

She smiled, despite her frustration. “That is both incredibly poetic and incredibly stupid, Smitty. And don’t call me ‘Charlie’.”

“Stop calling me ‘Smitty’.”

“Truce, then. Take these.” She handed him the timers. "Let's go blow shit up."

 

************************

TBC

 

 


	18. Charlotte Clarke, part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter after this, and we'll be well set up for the sequel. There's very little Liz in these last few installments, but the sequel is very heavily Liz-centric. She'll be going on a hell of a journey, literally and figuratively (not all that angsty, so you won't need to buy stock in Kleenex or anything.)
> 
> Special thanks as always to the awesome deandratb and figure_of_dismay who both beta-read through the fog of Thanksgiving and head colds. Bless them.
> 
> There's a good deal of swearing in this chapter. Sailors. Also Hannah.

_The U.S.S. Lake Superior_

_Pacific Ocean_

 

The rubber bullets, tear gas, and stun guns were at Taylor’s insistence. He refused to kill honest servicemen, which was noble of him. Red had long since given up such moral boundaries out of necessity, but he agreed to the conditions on the caveat that he wasn’t giving up his Colt .45 for any reason. Its weight was a familiar reassurance on his lower back.

The ship was eerily empty. They scaled the hull and secured the deck with very little interference. No alarms, no sirens. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. Richard Abraham’s warning about it being a trap echoed inside his head. He’d known it likely was, but this was unexpected. He’d thought he might have a chance heading it off before the ship entered Russian waters, but he’d figured on a lot more resistance.

Taylor’s radio crackled and he answered it, then came running up to Red. “Eagle-Eye spots about four lifeboats off portside. Our guys in the zodiacs have altered course to intercept.”

“The crew jumped ship,” he said.

“It’s looking that way. We found the captain on the stern. Cuffed, bullet to the back of the head, execution-style.”

“That sounds like Tom Keen.” A hard knot of fear tightened in his gut. If Keen was cutting loose ends… “I’m going below."

 

*********************

 

“We need to change course before the ship enters Russian waters,” Charlotte said. “And to do that, we need to regain control of the rudders. I’ll probably have to hotwire some systems together if they’ve been sabotaged as thoroughly as I expect.”

Smits frowned at her. “How...Jesus, are you Navy?”

“Was. SEAL, under the name Hannah Ferris. Honorably discharged ten years ago, almost.”

“Fuck me,” Smits exclaimed, “ _Lieutenant Commander_ Ferris? Jesus. I heard about that op in Afghanistan during my training. Sorry,” he added, blinking, “losing your team is probably the last thing you want to think about right now. Sir. Ma’am.”

She smirked. “Smitty, I don’t lose men under my command. I’ll lie, cheat, steal, and disobey orders, but I damn sure don’t lose lives. Stay here, set the rest of the charges. I’m going topside.”

“Aye aye.”

Charlotte shook her head. At least he was listening to her now. She shouldered the purloined assault rifle and took out the Glock she’d gotten off her guard. It was a nice gun, and on a nice leather gun belt. She might just have to keep this one. A new clip slid into place and she re-holstered the gun.

She was a fast enough draw and preferred to have her hands free for quieter takedowns when necessary. She missed her service knife. The guard had an old switchblade that wouldn’t cut butter, let alone a neck.

Footsteps reached her eyes and she darted up the stairs in time to catch one of the other guards at the entrance to the engine room. One good thing about Navy ships - there were pipes everywhere. Charlotte was tall, but she’d always been on the slender side, despite weight-training. Her fighting method was to use gravity to her advantage and end things as quickly as possible, as she was generally always outclassed in weight and strength.

She jumped, grabbed a handy pipe and swung her legs out in a swift kick that caught the man full in the face. He stumbled backward, grabbing his nose, and Charlotte let go of the pipe. She clapped her hands onto his shoulders and firmly pushed down while bringing her knee up, catching him in the already broken nose–and getting a few of his fingers in the mix. She took advantage of his distraction to get her hands around his head. His neck was too thick for her to snap it or even fracture the hyoid bone, so she simply slammed his head into the next available steel pipe.

That did the trick, and the man went down with a grunt. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and dropped down behind his body as a bullet whizzed past. The other guy must have been using a silencer of some sort; she’d only heard a dull pop as warning. The corridor was narrow and the pipes didn’t jut out enough to offer cover. Damn.

Fortune favors the bold, she thought, hoping it also favored the sheer stupid. She quickly slid off the assault rifle and jumped over her unconscious and probably very dead by now shield and took off down the corridor. At the last second, she dived into a roll to avoid the shot as the guard rounded the corner to fire at her approaching footsteps.

She took advantage of his momentary surprise at not finding her where he expected. As she came out of the roll, she caught him in the knees. He was trained enough that he maintained hold of the gun, but she grabbed his wrist as he fell and rolled with him so the gun pointed away from her. He struggled, but her elbow found his windpipe with a sharp jab and she pointed the gun down at his leg and pressed his finger into the trigger. Out of pain and shock he lost his grip, and she tore the gun away, rolling away and putting a clean double-tap right between his eyes.

There was no other movement in the corridor. She stood and wiped off some of the blood spatter. This gun was the same model Glock, so she stripped the ammo and the silencer. “Smitty,” she called. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” came the somewhat shaky reply. “Christ,” he said as she looked over at him, “you really are a goddamned ninja.”

 

*****************************

 

The cell was empty, but aside from the guard lying beside a broken morphine needle, there was no sign of bloodshed. Not recent, at any rate. Red winced as his fingers traced the outline of a stain on the bare cot; a blossom of rusty brown where a tired person had laid their head, heedless of a bleeding cut. Thin lines that spread out from the center of the stain indicated that she had at one point dragged her hair through it as she sat up, maybe.

He knew he should be picturing a grown woman, the woman from the photographs, the one he knew as Persephone. But he didn’t. His mind’s eye conjured the image of a little girl in a black leotard and pink tights crying relentlessly after slipping on the stairs. His little girl, in her special Christmas pajamas with reindeer all over them, waiting at the head of the stairs all wrapped up in her flannel robe for him to come home.

The bloodstain on the cot was the closest he had been to his beloved daughter in twenty-five years. The stabbing pain in his chest was every bit as sharp as the night he’d lost her. It was difficult to breathe past the tightness of fury and grief.

He turned and left the cell, well aware he had no chance tracking someone on the metal decking of the ship, particularly if they weren’t leaving a convenient blood trail. His radio crackled and Taylor reported the sound of shots from down in the engine room. Cameras were down, he couldn’t see anything. “We’ve secured the bridge. It’s a mess up here. I’m leaving a detail up here and then I’ll meet you down in the engines.”

“Roger,” Red replied. He took one last look at the cot and then stepped back out into the hall.

 

**********************

 

The bridge was a hell of a sight. Charlotte had half expected it, but it would be hard on Smits. Officers he knew and had served under, friends he had played card games with in the mess, all of them dead, their bodies dumped in a pile in the middle of the floor. Someone had already started the cleaning process, just in case any debris survived the Russian battery.

There was another body slumped over a console, this one in full fatigues. Charlotte frowned. Those weren’t Navy issue, and none of the cabal’s goons had been armored up like that. She edged closer, cautiously, then reached out and pulled on the body to get a better look. A groan met her efforts and she holstered her Glock to better ease the man to the floor.

“Shit,” she hissed. “Dudley. Dudley, what the hell?” It was one of her boys, who shouldn’t be anywhere near the northwest Pacific let alone on this floating wreck of a ship. Blood poured from a cut on his head and she tugged his handkerchief free of his combat vest and pressed it to the wound. His eyes fluttered, but he remained largely unconscious.

The shock of seeing one of her men on board overrode her senses for just a moment too long. When the arms grabbed her from behind, she wasn’t prepared for it.

 

********************************

 

Red had always been gifted–and, occasionally, cursed–with an excellent memory, especially for names and faces. His wife had been terrible at remembering people; she’d come up behind him at cocktail parties and whisper to him with embarrassment that she forgot someone’s name or how she knew them. That radiant smile of hers, though, had always given her a pass. It was what he’d fallen in love with, that smile. It could make anyone forget anything.

The young man who was set on thoroughly sabotaging the engines of the Lake Superior had a nameplate that read “LT. Kevin Smits”. Red lowered his gun immediately, and Taylor, who was two steps behind him, followed suit. “You’re Abraham’s man,” Red said.

The lieutenant lowered his hands. “Admiral Abraham sent you?”

“Something like that.” Red looked at the charges the man was setting. “You’re sinking the boat?”

“Before it reaches Russian waters, yeah,” he replied. “I’ve sent off the rest of the crew who were alive and uncompromised in a couple lifeboats.”

“There was a prisoner on board. Where is she?” Red practically held his breath with impatience. “We’re not here to hurt her,” he added when the man hesitated.

“The bridge,” he said.

Taylor and Red exchanged looks. Neither of them had anything over the radio. Taylor lifted his up. “Dudley?” he called. When there was no answer, Taylor seemed grim. Red felt pressure squeeze his heart like a vice.

“Let’s go,” he said shortly.

 

************************************

 

There was nothing quite so terrifying in the world as falling through the air with the ground to your back. It was, in all likelihood, one of the most primally jarring things a human could experience.

When the console caught her in the back, the pain was every bit as intense and terrible as she’d anticipated but Charlotte gave herself no time to process it beyond, oh god kidney. She threw herself to the side to dodge a blow aimed at her head. Her goal had been to slide across the row of displays, but instead she sort of half-slithered to the floor. She caught herself with one arm – _ohshitbrokenwrist_ – and pulled out her knife with the other.

She buried the blade in her attacker’s thigh and gave it a mean twist, but she lacked the strength to pull it back out again, her grip weakened by the hot blood that spurted over her fingers. So she resorted to basics and headbutted him hard in the gut, sending him sprawling.

She fumbled for the Glock, which had slid to her left, but two shots rang out faster than she could force her broken wrist to cooperate. The man crumpled. “Jacob?”

Phelps lowered his handgun and darted forward, his arm extending to grab hers and help her up. “C’mon, we need to leave, now.”

Pain was starting to crowd in around her senses. “Smits,” she managed to gasp.

“Who? It doesn’t matter. Charlotte, listen, there’s guys crawling around everywhere on the boat. I don’t know if they’re cabal or what, but we need to go.”

“I think some of them are mine,” she groaned, stumbling over and grabbing onto a chair. “I’m not going anywhere until I get the rudder back.”

Phelps let out a string of curses. “This isn’t the time to play hero.”

She needed to get to the wires underneath the main display, but the damn cabinet wouldn’t open without a key. Fuck it. She slammed her elbow down and bent the door badly enough to pry it open. _Fractured elbow_ was added to the mental list of injuries.

Dimly, she registered the heavy sigh behind her, but it wasn’t until she heard the safety click off on his gun that she turned around. “Phelps.”

The gun pointed at her head. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it. “I can’t let you do this. If I don’t steer this boat into Russian waters, they’ll know I turned. I can’t afford that. I wanted to get you out, I owe you that much. But you just can’t fucking stop, can you?”

“I am not,” she said slowly, with grim determination, “going to let you start a world war.”

“Then stop me.”

 

**********************************

 

_Sea of Okhotsk_

 

Liz had only picked up a smattering of Russian words, but she was fairly certain from the vehemence of the captain’s voice that he was using very colorful language. A few well-greased palms had gotten her on board the fishing fleet, bound for oil fields to do a little unofficial testing before the Venezuelan government decided on a contract. She had smiled sweetly so many times in the past twelve hours that her cheeks had permanent cramps.

But here she was, on a string of boats that would lie smack between the Russian Navy and Red.

She hadn’t told Dembe she was getting on board the ships, but it had made sense to her at the time. The Venezuelan investor that she was meant to be would have done it and it would make a plausible story to the Russian military should they be intercepted. If she wasn’t here to question, the fishermen would simply roll over to the naval ships and this entire exercise would be pointless. Dembe was probably back on shore having kittens while Aram worked furiously to intercept the naval transmissions.

She looked out at the black sea and even blacker night. A quick burst of lightning lit up an area dimly over the horizon, and in the light she saw the outline of a dozen warships. She gasped.

This had made so much sense at the time, but now Liz was starting to severely doubt her sanity. She turned, wide-eyed, to the captain, whose language she didn’t share, but whose worried expression was all too easy to translate.

 

********************************

 

_The U.S.S. Lake Superior_

_Pacific Ocean_

 

Phelps’s weakness had always been women. In his heart of hearts, he wanted to be that P.I. in a trenchcoat protecting beautiful but dangerous dames. The more dangerous, the better, especially if they showed him any small amount of vulnerability. It was always about control and power with him.

So in her severely vulnerable and damaged state, Charlotte actually had the upper hand. Phelps didn’t want to shoot her, he wanted to save her and buy himself a little forgiveness. Maybe he thought that if he could save a woman from his past, he’d be able to save the woman he wanted to be his future.

Charlotte was simply thankful the asshole was right-handed.

Her left wrist was broken, but her forearm wasn’t. She jabbed out with it in a classic defensive move while at the same time swinging her body weight forward and connecting a vicious right hook to the corner of his jaw. She completed the swing and grabbed his right arm, putting her back to his front.

It hurt like hell, but she’d taken enough judo to be good at back throws. It was one of the few moves that put her height to significant advantage over her weight. She managed to get the force needed from bending and straightening her knees quickly, and Phelps went flying. He landed with a grunt on his back and the gun clattered to the decking.

She moved forward to capitalize on her advantage, but he recovered quickly and caught her in the midsection with his feet as he launched himself into a back roll. Charlotte stumbled back, fighting to catch the breath he’d just knocked out of her. He caught the back of her jumpsuit and body slammed her into the consoles, face first this time. _Shit_.

She struggled, but his forearm pressed against the back of her neck while his other arm threaded through her arms and held them captive behind her. “Stop it!” he commanded.

“Like hell,” she snapped, and used her foot to gain leverage against the console. She shoved off, lifting herself higher at the same time by pulling down on the arm that was holding her elbows. Jacob stumbled backwards, but her weight and leverage forced his back and knees to bend and they both went crashing down in the worst executed suplex she’d ever managed. The force drove the back of her head into his face with a satisfying, if somewhat painful, crunch, and it stunned him enough that his grip slackened.

She pulled away and rolled quickly to the side, ignoring the awful pain in her left wrist and the fact that her elbow didn’t want to entirely straighten. With her right arm she reached out and grabbed his gun, only realizing too late that he’d pulled hers out of her hip holster. It pointed straight back at her.

They sat there on the decking, panting and bleeding, staring, each wondering whether or not they could get off the kill shot before the other. Knowing they couldn’t.

He looked so damned tired. As tired as she felt. God, she was sick of this dance. “Just go, Jacob,” she pleaded. “They’ll try to kill you either way; you’re a liability. The ship doesn’t matter. You’ve got to get out of this. Go walk the labyrinth, it starts here.”

Phelps looked at her, his eyes full of emotion. She could see the struggle, but then something shifted and his eyes flicked past her shoulder. “Maybe redemption isn’t for everybody.” His gun moved, and on instinct she pulled the trigger of hers.

Her clip was empty.

There was a small, triumphant smile on his face as he continued to raise his gun at something in the doorway. Charlotte turned in just enough time to see a familiar silhouette. “NO!” she cried, the word ripped out of her in sheer terror. She slammed her hands down on the deck, disregarding her broken wrist and launched herself at Jacob.

The next few moments were slow and chaotic, and she barely processed what was happening. It all seemed to occur in flashes: the flare of the gun, the searing pain of the bullet ripping through her midsection, the look of shock and pain on Jacob’s face, the second bullet fired involuntarily as she fell on the gun. Metallic blood in her mouth, even more pain as she was shoved to the side. Gunfire, over her head this time, and Phelps’s disappearing feet.

She saw the blood pool out around her, and her eyes focused on her still unconscious man Dudley, sagged over on the deck by the captain’s chair. It was odd, but she focused on him entirely. He was such a heavy sleeper; they always had to take turns banging pots over his head to wake his ass up when they were out on detail. _Don’t Forget Dudley_ had become a mantra; an inside joke about the last final moments of mission prep.

Taylor’s face appeared in her vision as someone tugged at her shoulder and turned her over. She coughed and gasped, and spat out a mouthful of blood. “Don’t forget Dudley,” she managed, before she gave in to the pain and closed her eyes.

 

**********************

 

_Blood._

There was so much blood.

Taylor was barking orders, making arrangements, getting the medics set up, doing whatever he had to do. Raymond simply sat with his daughter’s head in his lap, his hands pressing down hard on her abdomen, trying desperately to keep the blood inside. To keep her alive.

“Charlotte,” he begged. “Please, Charlotte, stay with me.”

He could barely breathe beyond the choking fear and desperation. His only focus became her face, her pale, drawn face. If he looked away for a single second, he felt he could lose her. She would slip away from him, run through his fingers like water. He kept saying her name, kept watching her face.

They moved. A helicopter, another boat with a small med bay. Tubes, beeps, ripping fabric, someone else applying pressure, stopping the bleeding. He stayed, one hand on her forehead, brushing the hair back. Taylor had grabbed a towel and wiped the blood from it when he saw the trail Red had accidentally left in her hair. Through it all Red stayed, and he watched and he called her name. Another helicopter, and he just held her face and watched, his cries reduced to whispers. _Charlotte, Charlotte._

When they reached Hokkaido, it was there on the airstrip with medics strapping her down to a gurney and loading her into an ambulance that her eyes fluttered open. _Charlotte!_ They found his and it took a moment for her to focus, but when she did, she turned her head towards him and smiled beneath the oxygen mask. It was wide, beautiful. Brenda’s smile.

She drifted back into unconsciousness, and he still kept watch, until arms pried him away at the hospital. “You can’t go into the surgery,” a voice told him. “Reddington, she’ll be okay. Red, listen to me. She’s going to be okay.”

Those same arms helped him to a chair, and he realized that he was still dressed in bloody combat fatigues. He shook himself and looked up at Donald Ressler’s face, the man’s face pinched with worry yet still confident. “She’ll be in surgery for a while,” Ressler said. “I know the surgeon; he’s one of the best. This is an old decommissioned U.S. Army hospital, but we had equipment moved in and staff on hand just in case. Between my contacts and your friend Mr. Kaplan, we’ve assembled quite a team. She’ll be okay,” he repeated.

Red leaned back in the chair, his head resting on the cold wall. He closed his eyes and let out a long breath. She’ll be okay.

 

***********************************

 

_Okha_

_Sakhalin Island, Russia_

Aram sat up straight as an arrow in his chair, and Dembe looked over with a worried expression. “News?” he asked.

Aram held up a hand as his eyes ran over the translation of the radio feed that scrolled across his screen. “Reports of a shipwreck...definitely not in Russian waters, though. SOS calls,” he continued, “there’s a patrol out to check on things, they’ve...oh, crap,” he said.

“What?” Dembe asked, walking over to the table. “What is it?”

“The Russian patrol has intercepted a fishing fleet,” he said. “They’re holding all the crew and officers for questioning.” He chewed on his lip. “There appears to be some speculation bouncing between channels that there was an American spy on board one of the fishing boats. They’re transporting someone to Moscow.”

“Elizabeth,” Dembe guessed. “We were right, that patrol was probably cabal controlled.”

“If she hadn’t gotten the fishing fleet out there and in the way, God knows what could have happened. But if they’re transporting her to Moscow…” Aram swallowed.

Dembe looked grim. “We will get her back.”

 

****************************

 

_Sapporo, Hokkaido_

_Japan_

 

When she drifted to consciousness, it was with an odd sense of safety. There was a familiar smell in the air, something warm and clove-like. Between that and the sensation of sunlight warming her feet, she felt fairly at peace. Did she really want to wake up?

Aches and pains started to edge in around her consciousness, and she recognized part of her peaceful feeling as coming from morphine. Memories started to play behind her eyelids: a ship, gunshots, beatings. Lord, lots of beatings. No wonder she hurt everywhere.

Aw, crap, she’d been shot, too. She remembered that. Phelps. But he hadn’t been aiming at her. He’d been aiming at someone else. The figure in the hatch. That terrible moment of fear at losing the last bit of hope she’d clung on to for so many years. The last piece of who she had once been.

_Daddy._

She opened her eyes, and he was there. He was there. She knew he would look different; she had seen recent photographs. Less hair, rarely wore glasses. His face slightly rounder, the bags under his eyes heavier. His voice would be a little deeper, with more of a rumbling edge to it than she remembered from childhood.

He didn’t realize she was awake, and he sat pondering something off in the distance, his chin in his hand, a book in his lap. There was a tenseness in his expression, a worry. Did he knew who she was, or was he waiting to question her? She was almost afraid to make a sound, to ruin the illusion.

Then she saw that in his hand he held that stupid little keychain, the one with the ballet slippers, and she remembered his voice calling her name over and over again. It had been a beacon, a life preserver thrown into the tumultuous ocean of pain and exhaustion. He knew. Tears stung her eyes, and she drew in a shaky breath.

That caught his attention, and he turned to her. The simple love and and happiness that came over his face was too much for her composure. She weakly lifted her arms and called for him, unable to draw a steady breath between the sobs that felt torn out of her heart. He was at her side in a heartbeat, sitting on the edge of the bed, one hand brushing her hair back from her forehead and the other arm curled very gently around her midsection without placing any weight on her.

His lips brushed her forehead as she cried, and he kept murmuring those calming words all parents murmur when their child is sobbing hysterically. After a few long minutes, she could finally draw an even, deep breath–though pangs shot through her as she did so–and he drew back a little. He still sat on the edge of her bed. That bay rum smell she remembered still permeated the air.

He ran a thumb under his own eyes and then handed her a tissue from the bedside. She wiped her eyes and then gently blew her nose, then winced in pain as clenching her abdomen muscles caused a terrible jab of pain. “Son of a bitch,” she swore automatically, and then realized that those words were the first she had said to her father in twenty-five years.

Her eyes widened. “Shit, sorry. Ack,” she added, wincing, “damn. Fuck!” She rolled her eyes and gave up, tossing the used tissue weakly at the garbage can in the corner.

Her father stared at her, incredulous, then threw back his head and let out a long, genuine laugh. He shook his head, the laughter subsiding. “Hello, sweetheart,” he said, brushing a thumb across her cheek. “I missed you.” His voice caught on the last word, and she reached up and grabbed his hand.

“I missed you too, Dad.”

 

********************

TBC

 

 


	19. Sharzeh Balkhi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter of "Persephone". Thank you to all the readers and commenters who kept me going through this monster of a plot! 
> 
> Yet there are still many threads left unresolved, so forward we move to the sequel, titled "Nemesis", which is due to premier sometime in January. Maybe earlier.
> 
> In the meantime, I've been working on a soundtrack mix, so that will be up sometime soon on Tumblr. (I am collectorofwonder over there, too.) Additionally, there may be a deleted scene or two added here. Some Saram moments or maybe that alluded-to Lizzington sex-scene in Lisbon. 
> 
> Thanks as always to my lovely beta readers, deandratb and figure_of_dismay, who were with me through the long haul. Thank you!

_A plane_

_Somewhere over Siberia_

 

Liz fought her way to consciousness through a thick web of lethargy that she instantly recognized as sedative-induced. There was a brightness, and as she opened her eyes she saw a small, rounded window to her left. Sunlight was pouring through it at an angle. It was difficult to tell if it was setting or rising, but she’d lay money on setting. They were likely flying west.

To Moscow.

She remembered the desperate gamble to get the fishing boats in the way of the Russian warships, hoping against hope that the Russians wouldn’t want to risk a media debacle of a civilian slaughter. Or at the very least, that they’d be able to slow down the attack and buy Reddington some time.

There had been an explosion on the horizon, faint and so dim at first it was easy to mistake for another burst of lightning – except it had been in the opposite direction from the brewing storm. All Liz had to go on was hope, but where Raymond Reddington was concerned, hope was often justified.

The Russian military had not been amused by the fishermen’s stories, and even less so by the Venezuelan woman who had bribed them. At first, it had seemed like she might be able to get away with it, until she ran afoul of a captain that spoke far better Spanish than she did and spotted the inconsistencies in her accent. A succession of dank, rusted cells on a variety of ships had followed, until she had found herself handcuffed to a table and seated across from a Russian man in his fifties, whose rumpled suit and gin-blossomed nose told a tale that seemingly contradicted the sharp light of awareness and perception in his pale eyes.

That same man was seated across from her now, idly paging through an extensive file, a glass and metal teacup at his side. He flicked his eyes up from the file and saw her gaze on the cup. “Do you know,” he said amicably, “how difficult it is to remain...what’s your expression? ‘On the wagon’, yes? How difficult it is to remain ‘on the wagon’ in Russia?” He laughed, the deep, rumbling, slightly-wet laugh of a habitual smoker.

He waved a hand. “Not because we are a nation of drunks. Though sometimes useful, stereotypes so rarely tell the whole story. You see, Russians...we love people. We distrust a person, but we love people. We love unity and community. The word mir you translate as ‘peace’ in English, but that is only half of what it means. It means, in its heart, that peace can only be achieved when people are united, connected. A Russian will open heart and hearth to a stranger on a cold winter night, will feed them and ply them with drink until their belly is full and their feet are warm. How do you say no to such hospitality?”

He shuffled the pages, and then set the file down. Liz shifted in her seat, and discovered that each of her wrists was cuffed to the armrests. They had let her keep her warm clothes from the boat, at least, so she felt a little more secure than she would in a prison jumpsuit. The man leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, his fingers lacing together. “Maria Ivanovna Rostova,” he said, “welcome home.”

Liz froze. “ _What_?”

He shrugged. “I can call you ‘Elizabeth Keen’ if you prefer, but it’s so much less lyrical.”

“Who are you?”  
He smiled and took a sip of his tea. “You can call me Anatoly for now. That will do. Now, we have a few more hours before we land in Moscow, so I would like to ask you some questions about your mother. And about Raymond Reddington. But before we begin, let me get you a drink. Let’s warm your feet a bit, no?”

 

*****************************

 

_Sapporo_

_Hokkaido, Japan_

  


“Tell me about Lizzy.”

Red looked up from the book of Yukio Mishima stories the surgeon had loaned him. Charlotte faced him, her eyes half-lidded through pain and morphine.

“You should be sleeping,” he said gently. He closed the book and set it aside. “You never could fall asleep on your back, though, could you? Soon as you could, you’d flip yourself over in the crib. Gave your mother a heart attack thinking you would suffocate.” He swallowed past a sudden lump in his throat and saw that his words had a similar effect on Charlotte. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…” He stopped himself and shook his head slightly.

Charlotte shifted slightly on the mattress and he reached over to hold a cup of ginger ale so that she could sip from the straw. She made a face. So she still hated ginger ale, then.

He watched her, trying to memorize every detail of her face now the same way he had memorized it in her childhood. His mind conjured the shifting planes and angles as she would have grown from the little girl he last kissed goodbye to the lovely but broken woman in front of him. What had she looked like in that strange between phase when she had been neither child nor adult; that dangerous, shifting decade when a child most needed guidance and advice? When she had been alone in the world?

“Stop,” she admonished gently, “I’ve got enough survivor’s guilt for the both of us.” She swallowed and motioned for the ginger ale again. “I want to hear about Lizzy. What happened? You were taking her somewhere. I thought she was safe. I read in her file...a fire? That’s…” she paused to shift again, wincing, “that’s the part I don’t understand. What she had to do with anything, other than being Rostova’s kid.”

Red hesitated, for a fraction of a second, some dark, broken, treacherous part of himself wondering if he could really trust her - after all, she had worked for Alan Fitch for years. Then he saw something shift in her eyes, as though a light had been shuttered, and he cursed himself roundly. Even if this was all the lie that his fears whispered to him it could be, the woman lying now in the hospital bed in front of him had taken a bullet - two bullets - to save his life. He had trusted many people on far less, let alone his own daughter.

So he told her, haltingly, everything he could remember about that time. Even parts of it that Liz didn’t remember, that he hadn’t filled in for her. Some of it was simply too painful, and Liz had already realized far too much about her parents’ natures for her peace of mind. Charlotte listened, frowning in some places, wincing in others. When he told her about going deeper into the burning house after hearing a child’s screams, she nodded and smiled slightly.

“Of course you did,” she murmured.

He swallowed and looked down at his hands, remembering the sheer well of panic that had risen in him at hearing those screams. He remembered, too, the double-edged cut of hope - that somehow it wasn’t Katerina’s child, it was his, that he would have his little girl back, that he had found her. It wasn’t until the little girl in the window who pulled him through to safety had cut her arm, burnt her hand on the hot metal of the window latch, and screamed...that was when he’d finally snapped out of it and realized what was happening.

He had never quite forgiven himself for the well of disappointment, for the brief notion that he just wanted to leave; leave this crying child, this damned family that had cost him his own, simply walk away and out of everyone’s life. He nearly did. But the girl...she yelled and cried for her mother, she tried to stand back up and go in after her, but fell down in the snow that was stained red from her blood.

Red had taken Lizzy’s arm, bandaged it, called her name, gotten her calmed down, all the while ignoring his own wounds. He was still in shock, the pain wouldn’t set in until halfway to Sam’s house. He tried to go in after Katya, but it was no use. She saw him and she ran further into the fire, where he could no longer reach her.

Then the roof had collapsed, and Red realized in that moment it was an adequate metaphor for his life. It too had burnt and caved in. It would never again hold the same sheltering shape. What mattered from that point forward was what he managed to build from the ashes. What he managed to save. When he looked out and saw little Lizzy trying to stand up again in the snow, woozy from blood loss and pain, he’d known there was really only one thing in the world he would be able to save, and that was her.

It was easy, after that, to let the guilt set in. It was all his fault, after all. He should never have tried to separate Katerina from her daughter, he should have believed her about the cabal, he should have...should have...all these things he could and should have done if he weren’t so damned arrogant, if he hadn’t placed all of his trust in a system that he couldn’t see was broken.

He told all of this to Charlotte, words pouring out of him in a way they hadn’t in decades. He wasn’t sure why; she was his daughter, not his confessor. Yet even as a small child, Charlotte had that quality. Serious eyes set in a serious expression, asking him important questions. She had cared about everything, and cared deeply, and that was a quality that had always been missing in everyone else around him. He had found solace – and also worry – in his daughter being so much like himself. It was easy to tell her too much, believing her small shoulders were strong like his. She should have had a simple, carefree childhood.

Red was almost afraid now to meet her eyes, fearing her life had beaten that caring depth out of her the same way it had for him. That she had hidden inside of herself, limiting her heart to only one or two people, or worse, that she had grown hard and cold. But then he thought of Taylor and the other soldiers: men for whom money was not a motivator, but loyalty was. The best loyalty, Red knew, was born of kindness and respect, not fear.

Charlotte’s eyes held compassion, though he knew she held her own layers of pain from those years. Her hand reached out for his and he took it, cradling her fingers gently between his palms. The knuckles were bruised. “Jesus,” Charlotte whispered, after a long minute’s pause. “Poor kid.”

It was said unconsciously, but Red had to shake his head. He’d placed Lizzy with Sam, who had been a loving father, and he had given her every advantage he could in life. Charlotte had been on her own, with no help, no advantages, the victim of a succession of monsters. His jaw clenched at the thought of Fitch and what that man had done...he couldn’t really wrap his mind around it, as it stoked a deep fire of rage that he knew he’d barely be able to control. If Fitch hadn’t already been dead, Red would have torn him apart.

“Charlotte…”

“Later,” she said on a sigh. “Let’s just...let’s talk about all that later. I can’t right now. There’s a lot to be said, to be listened to, and I…” She shook her head slightly, mirroring his own gesture. With another wince, she pushed herself into a more comfortable position and raised the back of the bed slightly. He handed her the morphine drip control that had fallen, but she waved it away. “I would rather talk about it later,” she continued, meeting his eyes and holding them in a steady gaze. “For the moment, it’s enough that we’re able to be here, now, and be together again as a family, against all the impossible odds stacked against us.”

It took him a few minutes to master speech, but he nodded. “Okay.”

“Good,” she said. “So tell me about Lizzy.”

Red blinked. “I did.”

Charlotte tossed him a look. “You answered my questions about the past, but not the present. Or the future.”

With his daughter lying there looking at him expectantly, the same daughter that was only a few years older than Liz, it was suddenly difficult to put into words the exact nature of his relationship. It was complicated as hell; of course, so were the two of them. But he was afraid to utter the words aloud and have them feel tawdry, cheap: the textbook dirty thrill of an older man and a younger woman.

How did one manage to put into words the wonder and miracle of the way his life and Elizabeth’s had spiraled and danced around each other until they had finally met in the middle? How the tiny girl who had pulled him to salvation once had reappeared in his life as a grown woman who offered an entirely different sort of salvation? Theirs was not a new dance by any means, but there were always those who would reduce it to the brassy outline of only sex.

Charlotte smiled softly. “I thought you might be in love with her. I could tell she was highly attached to you, but then that’s sort of to be expected. All of that scarring from her parents would produce a person that would latch on to anyone who showed real affection, whether she wanted to or not. It probably drove her nuts; she so very much wants to be the strong, independent woman who doesn’t need anyone. I hope she’ll realize that woman is a product of fiction some day.” She closed her eyes, tiring. “Do you trust her?”

“Yes,” he answered. He recaptured Charlotte’s hand.

“Good,” she murmured. “There’s going to be a hell of a storm ahead, Dad.”

An arrowhead of bittersweet pleasure at hearing his most treasured name once again pierced his heart. He reached forward and brushed a hair from Charlotte’s forehead. Her eyes fluttered open and then closed again. “I’ll feel better about it all if you have someone,” she added, gently squeezing his hand. “Someone who’ll love you the way Mom was afraid to.”

He didn’t really want to think about Brenda, not with the guilt and pain so close to the surface. He would have to bury it a bit before he could face that demon. Charlotte had drifted back into sleep, obviously a little more comfortable in the new angle of her bed. Asleep, he could see the echo of his little girl so clearly in Charlotte’s face that it both comforted him and broke his heart all over again.

 _Someone who’ll love you…_ And who was that, for Charlotte? Or had she loved and lost, as well? There had been an undertone in her voice, a poignancy, and he didn’t think it was prompted solely by a mature dissection of her parents’ romantic relationship. He thought over what he knew of her past, of the years he had missed.

It seemed like years ago, not weeks, that Lizzy had sat pouring over Teddy Alleline’s files in France, contemplating the jigsaw puzzle that was Hannah Ferris. She had been able to put the pieces together, but Red was almost afraid to see what image it made; in the end, Lizzy had been the brave and strong one, not him. She had been the protective knight to his damaged prince. Perhaps that’s the way it always had been, to some extent. He had been ready to die in that fire-engulfed room, but her hands had pulled him to safety.

The military records were real - Red knew that much from his own investigations in the past. Persephone had always been one of those phantom ends of the cabal that he could never quite nail down. Fortunately, in hindsight.

Liz had confirmed that her degree and training were also real; earned under the Hannah Ferris alias, but real. So she had sought to make something of her life apart from the cabal and her...other business endeavors. Combat psychology, psychotherapy, specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder and accompanying psychoses...who was the person she so desperately wanted to heal? Herself? Her men? Taylor and the others he had met had certainly seen their fair share of trauma on the battlefield, but there was something else there. Something else had prompted this shift from playing along to starting her own game.

The door to the room cracked open slightly, and Donald Ressler slid into the room. He glanced at the bed, and while he was quick to hide the tightening jaw muscles and flexing fist, Red noted the reaction. Well, that was interesting. He supposed he had Charlotte to thank for Ressler’s rather unprecedented lack of being a giant pain in the ass.

Ressler stood at the foot of the bed for a moment, assuring himself that Charlotte was breathing and asleep, then turned to Red. “We need to talk,” he whispered. “Dembe and Aram are here.”

It took him a moment to process the implications. “Where’s Elizabeth? And Agent Navabi?”

“That’s what we need to talk about.”

 

*****************************

 

_Muswell Hill_

_London, England_

  


The house was larger than Samar would have expected, placing her brother’s wife in a well-to-do bracket for a single mother. Muswell Hill was in the Hampstead post code, but less trendy, more family-oriented. The people here were affluent, but not unreasonably so. It was a perfect neighborhood for one to blend in, assimilate.

It wasn’t difficult to pick the lock on the back door when no one answered, but her hackles raised when she got inside and saw a non-responsive alarm panel. It was a sophisticated system, one that was incongruous with the economic status represented by the house. When she reached out to it, the panel fell off and she saw a host of wires that had been cut.

The kitchen was clean, save for one half-drunk glass of orange juice in the sink. There was no condensation, and the juice had begun to separate, so it was at least several hours since someone had last been there. The rest of the first floor was also remarkably clean and tidy, but Samar found a note to the cleaning service, which certainly explained the gleaming floors and the pair of muddy cleats placed gently on a piece of newspaper. It was a lived in, but well cared for space.

Yet to a careful observer, there were items missing. Keys. Hats and scarves - it was chilly in London at this time of year, still. There was the pair of cleats, but no other shoes, no rainboots, no balls or knapsacks or books. No comics. Nothing around a boy would care about aside from shelves of carefully organized legos and board games in his room.

There were empty spaces, where things had been picked up, and unexpected room in drawers where clothes had been scooped out. There was no luggage anywhere. Wherever they’d gone, it appeared they had gone under their own power.

Her phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket instinctually, but then froze. It was a burner, and she hadn’t given anyone the number. She glanced at the display, but didn’t recognize the caller. Reluctantly, she flipped open the phone and held it to her ear.

“Samar Navabi,” said an unfamiliar woman’s voice, “I see you and I have a common goal.”

“Jennifer,” she replied flatly.

“Got it in one. Good job. Where’s the kid?”

“I don’t know,” Samar answered, shifting her stance so that she was no longer visible from any window or door. “What did you do with them?”

There was a soft snort of laughter from the other end. “Cute, Ms. Navabi. I don’t really do cute, though, so I’ll be honest here: I don’t have the Balkhi kid. Or, really, the Navabi kid, I suppose. But I want him. And you’re going to help find him for me.”

“Why on earth would you imagine I would do such a thing?”

“Oh, not because you want to, but because you have to. If I find him first, the kid’s future outlook is suddenly a lot dimmer. But if you find him first, Auntie Samar can protect him. I’m going to be looking, and I’m not going to give up, you see. So you’ll have to look, too. And rest assured, I’ll be watching you.”

Samar swallowed. “What do you want with my brother’s family? What possible use can they be to you other than manipulating me? Why not just come to me directly? You know where I am now.”

“Now, that’s interesting,” Jennifer answered, her voice laced with amusement. “It seems like someone didn’t read the whole file. Sloppy work, Navabi. I have no use for sloppy agents, and frankly, little use for you beyond amusement. Oh, and speaking of amusement, let’s go ahead and start now. I’m bored.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a bomb, strapped to the chest of a delightfully isolated and radicalized young man, who is about to step onto the southbound Northern Line at Highgate Station in ten minutes. He’s due to blow up King’s Cross Station shortly, more’s the pity for all those little muggles who keep trying to find the Hogwarts platform. What a tragedy. You’re trained in counter-terrorism, Agent Navabi. Let’s see how good you are, eh? Have fun!”

Samar stared at the disconnected phone in shock before her training took over and she began to dial the number of a Mossad operative she knew in London. She stopped and frowned - she no longer worked for Mossad, and they’d as likely detain her as believe her. Damn. She had nothing.

No, wait. She had a name and a contact number from Liz: Theodore Alleline.

It took a few moments, but the number worked and a raspy voice asked in clipped Queen’s English, “What color is the sky?”

“Red,” Samar answered. “The sky is red.”

 

**************************

 

_Sapporo_

_Hokkaido, Japan_

  


Red rubbed a hand over his face as he studied the photos lifted from the Russian naval vessel’s security cameras. Damn it, Elizabeth. He looked up at Dembe, whose eyes were straight forward, his face the usual mask it fell in when he assumed blame for something. Not that Red ever blamed him for anything.

“You couldn’t have known she’d get on the boat,” Red said quietly to him. “You had every reason to expect she’d keep your rendezvous.”

To an outside observer, nothing about Dembe’s stance had changed, but Red could see that he relaxed somewhat. Even after all this time, after everything they had been through together, there was still some small part of Dembe that feared losing Red’s affection, as though such a thing was possible. Dembe and Liz had a lot in common. There were occasions in the past where Red had wondered if he was only capable of loving those who were damaged and needed him, but that had been before he realized that everyone, in their own way, carried the wounds of their lives around with them. There was no one who lived and remained unscarred.

Dembe shook his head slightly. “You would have known what she was going to do.”

“No,” Red corrected. “It might be clear in hindsight, as Liz’s impetuousness is somewhat predictable in its unpredictability, but no. Even after everything else she’s foolishly done to save my life, I probably wouldn’t have expected it. We all have our blind spots.” He handed Dembe the photos.

“She was just supposed to bribe the fishermen into carrying the equipment on board to sound for new oil wells. We just needed an obstacle in the way of the Russian navy,” Aram explained to Ressler. “But I guess Liz thought the boats wouldn’t leave unless she was there, maybe.”

“We have a couple contacts in Russia,” Alex Taylor provided from where he leaned against the waiting room doorjamb.

They’d turned it into a war room of sorts, as there was no one else using this particular facility. Red simply hoped the power company bribes would hold out until Charlotte was stable enough to be moved.

“Not many,” Taylor continued, “but a couple. The Russian mob has Moscow locked down pretty tightly, and we’ve never gotten along well with them.”

Red raised an eyebrow at Taylor, and the man grinned. “Yeah, so, it’s Ferris that doesn’t get along well with others. Particularly when they throw a cat into a deep fat fryer to make a point about what will happen if you don’t play along. She didn’t take that well.”

Everyone in the room flinched at that visual. “I don’t think I want to know what she did,” Ressler said.

“Oh, I bet you can guess.”

Unfortunately, Red could. He knew the Russians in question, and they loved to throw other things into fast food fryers to make points. Usually people. He’d heard previously that they’d lucked into capturing Persephone - and he’d also heard about how they’d been found. At the time, he’d found it somewhat amusing; poetic justice for a group of scum that deserved no better.

But the thought of his child – the sweet, wide-eyed girl who loved everyone – shoving someone’s head into a vat of boiling oil...that sat ill on his conscience. What was left of his conscience, at any rate. He was willing to shred his own soul to keep others in the light, but he had failed to do so for the two most important people in his life. What had any of this been for? What had he accomplished?

His daughter had become a killer, and now lay broken and bleeding on a hospital bed while the love of his life grew more like him every day, and was now in the custody of the very people whose hands he had tried to keep her out of for so long. The worst sort of Midas, everything he touched grew corrupted and rotten.

“So my contacts may not be all that helpful,” Taylor finished. “Where’s your other agent, the pretty Persian lady that can probably kill me with her pinky finger?”

“Samar’s in London,” Aram replied.

Taylor stood a little straighter, and Red could feel the feel the tension in the room change. He frowned. “London,” Taylor repeated. “Why is Navabi in London?”

Aram drew out another photograph. “You can probably tell us. Who is this woman with Shahin Navabi and Hannah Ferris? Charlotte,” he corrected, as an aside to Red. He turned back to Taylor. “Samar thinks she must have been Shahin’s wife. There’s another photo,” he continued, drawing out the photograph of a boy around ten, posing with a soccer ball. “Samar says he looks exactly like her brother at that age.”

A muscle in Taylor’s jaw twitched. “Does anyone else know? Is it just to see them that she went or are they in danger?”

“Samar thinks that Jennifer R-”

Aram didn’t even get to finish the sentence before Taylor swore roundly and darted out of the door, bellowing orders. Red leaned forward to pick up the pictures. “Azar Balkhi,” he read the caption written on the back. It was Charlotte’s handwriting; he recognized it from all her Nemesis notes. The three of them were dressed in combat fatigues, rebel scarves around their necks. There was something else, something about the way they stood that bothered him.

The woman Aram had labeled as Shahin’s wife stood a little apart, her eyes not on either Charlotte or Shahin. Her shoulder was angled slightly, her stance one of indifference. But Charlotte...she was turned towards Shahin, her stance open, a small smile gracing her lips. Shahin leaned slightly towards her, his head tilted, indicating that Charlotte had his full attention and interest. A sick feeling of dread began to settle in Red’s stomach, and with trepidation, he reached for the picture of the boy.

He barely noticed the chaos around him as Aram, Dembe, and Ressler tried to find out what was happening, why they were suddenly packing up. _Sharzeh Balkhi_. He studied the boy’s face, the smile.

The damned _smile_.

And then he knew what had pushed Charlotte to try and make a separate life, to carve a space she could fit into when everything was over; he knew what hope had driven her to find a way to fight back. He would have done the very same, had he known.

They had left him alone in the waiting room, and he sat in stunned silence until Ressler and Taylor reentered. “Taylor thinks we have a mole,” Ressler said in a low voice. “The surgeon says Charlotte can be moved, but we can’t go too far. If we do have a mole, this place is definitely compromised, so we need to move. You and I and the others are taking Charlotte somewhere safe; Taylor’s going to remove his men until he figures out what went wrong. What do you think?”

Red looked up from the boy’s photo and met Taylor’s grim look. “He’s probably right,” Red confirmed. “How much do you trust this Azar Balkhi?”

“Charlotte trusts her,” Taylor replied, his use of her name emphasizing the seriousness of the situation. “But apart from Azar, Charlotte, the boy, and me, no one else knows the truth. That we know of; however, clearly someone’s figured it out.”

Ressler frowned. “What truth? You said the photos were in the file you gave to Samar, so it would be obvious it’s Shahin Navabi’s family.”

“His son,” Red confirmed, “but not hers.” He looked at Taylor to see if his suspicions were correct, and was met by a steady, firm look.

“If that’s not his wife, then who is she? Whose son...oh.” Ressler froze as the truth dawned on him. “Oh, hell.” He looked to Red. “That’s why Jennifer wants the boy.”

“Yeah,” Red confirmed, looking down at the photo again. “He’s Charlotte’s son.”

 

***************************

 

_The North Woods_

_Maine, United States_

 

**_Four years prior..._ **

  


“I don’t want to go to England,” Sharzeh complains. “I won’t know anyone. I want to stay with you.”

Charlotte picks her way over the granite path carefully, reaching behind to help her son over the obstacles of rock and tree root. Tomorrow he’ll be seven, and he was shooting up to be as tall as his father. It hurts terribly to know she had missed so much of his childhood, and would miss even more.

She sits down on a piece of flat rock and hesitates slightly before holding out her arms, a little frightened that he might refuse her. But he doesn’t; he steps into the hug and places his head on her shoulder. “I love you,” she tells him. “There is nothing in this world that I love so much as you, but that’s why I can’t stay. I know it hurts, and I know it’s hard to understand. It’s okay if you want to hate me for it. That won’t ever change how much I love you.”

“Mom says you’re like a superhero with a secret identity,” he says, referring to Azar. He calls them both ‘mother’; it’s easier to prevent a slip-up that way.

“Something like that,” she answers, wishing it was true. “But I’m not as good inside as a real hero. No one really is. People are flawed. Everyone carries pain. It’s just what you decide to do with it that matters.”

He pulls away after crying for a few minutes, and she brushes away his tears with her thumb. “Now, let’s keep going. We’re almost there. I set up some target practice, and you’re going to learn how to keep yourself safe if you ever have to. It’s something my father taught me around your age.”

“I don’t like guns,” he says.

“Me, either,” she answers. “And for most of your life, you won’t have to think about them or have one. But there might come a day when because of me, someone comes to find you and hurt you. If that happens, I want you to know how to use a gun. The only thing that matters to me, Sharzeh, is that you stay alive.”

He shrugs his agreement, which is probably the best she’ll manage to get out of him. She knows it’s her fault that he’s sullen sometimes and difficult at others. She should either be present all the time, or cut herself out of his life, as Azar would argue. But she couldn’t do that. She just couldn’t.

“When we get back,” he asks, “can we watch some of those old Fraggle Rock tapes?”

Another time and another place intrudes on her present, and she remembers her hand reaching out for her father’s. She remembers the pain in his face, the fear. The tears as he showed her where the gun was kept. His warm hug as he tried to keep her close, and safe, while he could, trying so valiantly to not think about what might happen in the future.

What _did_ happen.

She would give her very life to make sure it would never happen to Sharzeh, but if it did...if it did...God willing, he would never become like her, like her father, never have to tread that path of death and bloodshed, but if he did…

If he did, she would make damn sure he was ready.

“Yeah,” she answers. “Of course we can.”

He bounces down the path, humming the theme song and she tries not to let it tear out her heart. _Dance your cares away_.

_Worry’s for another day._

 

***************************

  
END.


	20. A Soundtrack Playlist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Extra** A "soundtrack" play list.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought I'd share some of the musical inspiration for this piece, since music is such a big part of the Blacklist.

All tracks are available on Spotify. Selected by chapter mood, but works well on shuffle, too.

 

Prologue: A Quiet Darkness/Houses

1\. Sirens/Tom Odell

2\. The Preacher/Jamie N Commons

3\. Compass/Zella Day

4\. Pass Them By/Agnes Obel

5\. Demon/Kandle

6\. Take Us Back/Alela Diane

7\. Gold/Wake Owl

8\. Another Love/Tom Odell

9\. Beekeeper/Keaton Henson

10\. The Lion The Beast The Beat/Grace Potter & The Nocturnals

11\. Flames/Vast

12\. Don't Let It Get You Down/Johnnyswim

13\. Bow And Arrow/Reuben and the Dark

14\. All My Tears/Ane Brun

15\. Bartholomew/The Silent Comedy

16\. Beat the Devil's Tattoo/Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

17\. Ain't Gonna Drown/Elle King

Epilogue: Open Hands/Ingrid Michaelson


End file.
